Beauty and the Bea-holder

When I was twelve, my best friend and I, who were totally competitive with each other, submitted poems for a writing contest. Hers was about believing in your dreams, and mine was about living in a cottage with whacked-out pet gnomes. Mine got an honorable mention (umm, I think every poem that got submitted did), but my friend won a trip to Florida to meet Bea Arthur from a show called The Golden Girls. What Bea Arthur has to do with poetry I don't know, but naturally, in addition to being (ugghhh) happy for my friend, I was seething with envy and the stink of failure. It should have been me and Bea, maybe eating cookies together, definitely trading gossip while sitting in the Golden Girls’ cool Miami deco kitchen, shouldn’t it?

Reading the submissions for this contest, and the vastly varying reactions from other readers, reminds me of what I was just beginning to figure out then: "Writing love" is soooo subjective.

I don't know whether my friend was a better writer than me or not (totally possible), or maybe the judges were just more fond of dreams than gnomes (that's also totally possible). Rumor has it that in the basement of HarperCollins there's a carbon copy of a rejection letter to Herman Melville saying that the manuscript for what would eventually be his most famous work just wasn't as good as his other books, and that the editor would have to pass. And wasn't there something like that with Harry Potter, too? I bet it happens all the time.

If you didn't win this writing contest, or if some people had some less than desirable things to say about your work, here's what I'd suggest: weigh the comments and think honestly—do they have a point? If they missed your point, was there a way you could have made it a little clearer? Use whatever you agree with to leverage your writing to the next level. Discard what you don't need. Keep working. And remember that whole "beauty and the beholder" phrase—it's overused for a reason!

Have you ever felt someone judged your writing unfairly? Or missed the part of your story you thought was most special? How did you deal?

Jodi Lynn Anderson
Author of The Secrets of Peaches