Good News on a Bad Day

Good news is always good unless it's a bad day, in which case it becomes great news. Some of the worst days I've ever had ended with good news. On the day that I failed a major math test, one which had studied hours for, I found out I was accepted to my first choice university. On the worst date of my life, so bad that I swore off dating- my (now) husband called to ask me out.  And on the day when I felt like giving up on writing, I won a flash fiction writing contest.

Earlier that same week I had received a bad review of my completed manuscript from a beta reader. She called my writing "unpolished" and "dull." I was ready to throw the entire book in the garbage. The two years I'd spent writing, what I thought was my best work, appeared to not even achieve adequate results. I figured I may as well stop while I'm behind. Then I saw a post for a flash fiction writing contest on a Facebook group I belong to, The Fabulists, run by Julie Gray. My mind screamed at me that I can't write and I should just move on. I entered anyway figuring I have nothing more to lose. And then, I won.

That's not the only time good news had found me on a bad day. I received not one, but three rejection letters for my manuscript on the same day that I also received a notification that a short story I wrote was going to be published in an international Jewish Magazine. The story that I had written was on a day where I felt like I was the worst mother in the world because of a fight I had with my daughter. I told myself,  the only good to come out of the fight with my daughter is the lesson I learned. So I put the story in writing to share the experience of that day with others. It turned out the editors of the magazine I submitted it to thought it was a story worth sharing too.

Bad days happen to everyone, no one can escape hard times. I still have days where I feel like there is a wall between me and the publishing world. Sometimes my prose doesn't flow and adverbs populate the pages instead. Sometimes my kids think they live in a barn, and no amount of cleaning can turn their sties into habitable rooms. Sometimes my learning disability gets the best of me. Sometimes I watch YouTube videos by authors who tell me I'm doing it all wrong. And then I receive a notification that my Blog reached over one hundred views and that my story is being reprinted in another magazine. Then I wonder what I was so worried about in the first place.