Competition?

Good morning!

It's been a while. I've been torn between living and writing and this blog suffered in consequence because of the struggle. I won't bore you with what has been going on, it can only matter to the people involved and has nothing to do with writing except that it prevented me from indulging myself. I will say that in the past week I had two fairly productive days and that I wish I could be more productive.

The reason is that I've decided to enter one of my novels in a competition and I need to prepare the submission materials. Writing a synopsis, blurbs, an excerpt and etc.; you know, the usual thing. And speaking of usual; I usually don't even think of entering my work in any sort of competition. Having it published and placed where people can purchase it is competition enough for me. But it's time to take the next step in my evolution as a writer and get my work into the hands of people who can make a (hopefully) objective evaluation of it and learn if it is worthy of wider distribution.

You see, networking and getting your work where influential people can see it is part of the game, and I've not taken the steps necessary to do those things. I am not an especially social person and find myself standing on the edges of any group, looking in. I know this about myself and while I worked at altering my personality to help further my career before I was retired, I gratefully relapsed when I began writing.

I don't expect to set the world on fire with my work and never did. I don't believe that anything will come of my entry into this competition and while I will do my best to present my work in the best light, it is unlikely that I will be making any trips to the venue of the awards ceremony. Some people may see that as defeatism and self-fulfilling prophecy of failure, but I am being realistic. Aside from the things I learned in school, I am a self-taught writer and couple that with my lack of networking skills and you can see that there is little chance that I will succeed in winning anything in this competition. I will do the best that I can and hope for the best. If anything comes of it, then that will be good. If not, then I've lost nothing.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, Congruencies, Questionable Interests and others.
Available on Kindle