“Beneath the Surface”

Last week I wrote about how I had finished writing my first book. I think I mentioned in that post that while I’m proud of myself for completing an entire story and I love the story, I think of it as a practice run because I know it’s not amazing. Anyway, I’m working on practicing my writing so back in April or beginning of May I decided to enter a writing contest on the official Wattpad Mystery page in collaboration with AppleTV for #HomeBeforeDark.

The challenge was to write a 500 word or less story true or fictional about the truth coming out or honesty prevailing. I decided to do a sort of dark, short story about a girl who was in a car accident and then afterwards keeps thinking there’s something she’s forgetting. It’s called “Beneath the Surface”. I really enjoyed writing the story! It was hard to keep it under 500 words – I kept having to cut words when I came up with ideas for the story. Plus, I’m working on being more descriptive in my writing so it was hard to cut words when that’s what I’m working!

So I entered the contest and I had no idea what to expect. I’m a newbie writer and I had no idea how many people would enter. I submitted my story about a week into the competition and with weeks left to go until it closed. By the next day I was ranking (analytics wise) in the single digits, but there were only about 30 entries. By the time the competition closed, there were close to 400 entries and my ranking had dropped to 300 something.

I was pretty sure I would not be a finalist and I was okay with that because it was my first ever writing competition and surely there were hundreds better than mine! Lo and behold I got a message from Wattpad saying I had been selected as a Top Ten Finalist! I was shocked!

I distinctly remember being almost teary eyed about something going on in the news (this was over a week ago during the height of the protests and marches for Black Lives Matter and against police brutality) and I opened my laptop to tweet something emotional. Then, I saw the message about my story and I about cried but now for happy reasons! So many emotions!

I didn’t end up winning, but that’s okay! I’m still so ecstatic that I was selected as a finalist out of hundreds! It definitely makes me feel like I’m on the right track and I’m going to keep on writing and practicing!