Short Story: The Northern Highway & Contest results

Earlier in autumn, I mentioned how I participated in a writing contest hosted by a certain science fiction magazine.

An act of desperation.

I talked about this in that earlier post in summer, but you've probably forgotten, so let me repeat myself yet again.

I’m not a huge fan of contests, generally speaking.

My past design professor told us creative contests are essentially just a big scam, intended to gather a quick pool of ideas/designs/other content from ambitious creators, the prize money being mere pittance compared to what the hosting companies would rightfully have to pay professional creators.

Many times, there is no real prize at all, only “free publicity” (the most worthless thing in the universe), or a 1-month membership for a service you don’t need. Also, the small print on the terms of the contest will often say that the organizer reserves the right to use even the non-winning submissions for no additional compensation. To maximize the fraudulence, they sometimes even collect an entry fee, and you end up paying the organizer for the privilege to have your work stolen. And people fall for it en masse.

Time after time again, I’ve seen my teacher proved right and steered clear of such contests.

But we’re talking about a well-established, long-running magazine here, which has run the same short story contest annually since the 80s, for almost 40 years now. Moreover, the award money for first place is quite generous compared to every other local literary contest, so I thought, hey, you miss all the shots you don’t take, and decided to try my luck.

The subject was simple.

A scifi/fantasy short story. At most 40 pages, no minimum length specified.

That’s it.

Not a huge hurdle. In top condition, I could’ve done it in a day. Now, my arms are still rather fatigued, so it took me about a week to get it done. But I had an idea and got to work and managed to come up with a short story of a science fiction-y vibe, and mailed it. They would only accept printed submissions.

And now, three months later, the moment we’ve restlessly awaited has finally come.

Actually, it’s been so long, I already forgot I participated. But never mind.

The results of this year’s contest were made public. 

It’s with great pride and excitement that I will now tell you how I fared in my first ever writing contest!

My work was—

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And now, three months later, the moment we’ve restlessly awaited has finally come. The results of this year’s contest were made public.

Almost 140 short stories were submitted by just as many aspiring writers. I took a look at a few older issues in the local library and thought the stories previously published weren’t really anything too special. Not the sort of stuff I can read, to be frank.

I felt my chances were decent.

And now we have the truth.

My work, titled "The Northern Highway", was….

…Disqualified.

Yeah.

Apparently, the mail didn’t deliver the work by the deadline. 

I thought three days would be enough for a domestic letter, but I guess not. But with my hands being as they were, it was physically impossible for me to write it any faster. It really couldn’t be helped.

Either way, my work didn’t make it among the listed entries. I’ve never won any contests in my life and I didn’t seriously think I’d walk away with thousands of euros from this, but to be completely shut out like that, totally ignored—I won’t lie, it was a pretty heavy blow. A shock.

Well, every cloud has a silver lining, right?

Since the magazine chose to relinquish any claim on the story, I can now share it here with you guys without any worry over publication rights.

Whether it would’ve been worth any prizes, or belongs in the trash bin where it ended up, I’ll let you be the judges of that, once again. 

I value your opinion a lot more than some neverheard jerks, anyway.

I don’t like the post formatting here on Patreon, so rather than dumping the text in the post, I rearranged it into a tidy pdf that should be more comfortable to read. You can download the whole thing via the attachment below the post.

All being said, I hope you enjoy it!

Something a bit different from what you're used to seeing from me.

A few words about the story itself.

The idea came to me pretty quickly and was straightforward to write down, but there were some issues.

Mainly, it’s physically impossible for me to write anything that doesn’t involve yuri. I lose motivation immediately if I try and never finish. Can’t do. Impossible.

But I didn’t want the judges to think I was fishing for political points by forcing myself to include LGBT elements, nor did I want to turn off the portion of readers who aren’t into lesbians. Nor did I want anyone I know, friends or family, to come across such a story published under my own name and go like, “oh so he’s that kind of guy after all”. So no romance. Only subtext at most.

How to work around this?

In the end, the solution was painfully simple: don’t describe the protagonist at all! Not even a name is given. The reader has the freedom to imagine the main character of the story any way they like. It could be me, it could be you, a man, a woman, or maybe not human at all, a robot.

Isn’t the power of language wonderful?

Until next time!

Merry Christmas!