"You should do this," he said. For many years Adam has known of my interest in writing and, for many years, has patiently chided me to be more productive. I don't know how he came across this site or the contest, but that he put it in my path and said "Do this, you fool." spoke volumes to me of his perennial faith in whatever talent I may possess.
And so I wrote.
Backing up, first I pondered. The contest's sole criteria, aside from the story weighing in at no more than 3500 words, was "write about a crime". Okay...write about a crime. Sounds easy, right? I tinkered and sputtered in the noir/mystery genre for about two or three years now with little success, but I was (at first) confident that I could come up with something.
Until I couldn't. My mind went to the same place many beginning writers' minds go to and that is: "I'm no criminal. How do I write about something I don't know anything about?" But I wanted to enter the contest, in part to win the $200 prize, but mostly to prove to myself that I could write a story that others found worthy and to reach that goal I needed an idea. It took about a day and a half to unearth the lump of ore that I smelted and refined and beat and tempered into "Confidential Donation".
Where am I going with this? To be honest, I'm not that sure. I came into this article with no real plan other than to put up some content on a blog I've largely ignored for the better part of its existence but isn't that reflective of how I've treated my writing "career" all these years?
I guess what I'm getting at is that Adam's latest nudge, which sprouted into an idea and grew into a short story which won 3rd place in the 2020 edition of the Audrey Jessup Award contest, has shown me that writing, if I believe it is who I am, then it should be who I am.
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.-- Epictetus
All these many years I have done myself a disservice by not pursuing the thing that engaged me, the thing that made me feel I was in this life to pursue. Writing "Confidential Donation" was hard work and there were moments I wanted to give up, but I stuck to it and finished the work. The feeling of true accomplishment, of putting the final period on the last sentence of a piece of work that complete strangers found to be worthy, is a feeling I haven't experienced in many, many years.
Which brings me round to the question, why didn't I pursue it? Why didn't I make writing stories the thing that defines me? These aren't rhetorical questions. I'm asking myself, "Why did you waste all this time? You're almost fifty. If you live to be 80, the half-way marker is well back in the distance."
Epictetus said, "First, say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do." Often doing what you have to do comes into conflict with doing what you want to do--eat chips and watch Netflix; drink beer and relax with friends; go for a drive in the country--and if the latter wins out, the person you might have been recedes further and further into the distance. I have remarked to a few close friends that I sometimes feel a dissonance between the life I have and the life I wanted. The real "me" exists in some other universe where along the road he made all the right choices while I took the worn path and ended up here.
While writing "Confidential Donation" I felt myself turn, if ever so slightly, and take my first halting steps back toward that real "me".
I know my way now. All I have to do is walk, one foot in front of the other, a little every day, in the direction of home, and when I reach a crossroads ask myself the simple question: "Will this decision bring me closer to the man I want to be?" In this way, through consistency of application, I can do something every day that makes me feel like the person I wanted to be all along, even if only for a little while, until finally I am that person, until finally I meet myself on the road back home.
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