{"id":526,"date":"2010-12-05T22:41:42","date_gmt":"2010-12-05T22:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=526"},"modified":"2010-12-05T22:41:42","modified_gmt":"2010-12-05T22:41:42","slug":"reaching-semi-finals-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/reaching-semi-finals-first-time\/","title":{"rendered":"On Reaching the Semi-Finals For the First Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.writersofthefuture.com\/\">Writers of the Future<\/a> contest folks posted the list of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.writersofthefuture.com\/node\/638\">3rd quarter semi-finalists and finalists<\/a>, on which you&#8217;ll find yours truly &#8230; marking the first time I&#8217;ve made it to that level of the contest.<\/p>\n<p>It feels good to have made it past the &#8220;Honorable Mention&#8221; hurdle, at least this once, though my critical self has had trouble putting it in perspective. Those who know me well won&#8217;t be surprised that this milestone produced a variety of thoughts &#8212; most of them negative &#8212; in my addled brain. Listed here in the approximate order in which they occurred to me:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Maybe I&#8217;m getting better at telling a good story&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The competition must&#8217;ve been fairly weak this quarter&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;If the best story I ever wrote only rates a semi-finalist slot, maybe I should give up this writing stuff&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I wish I&#8217;d made one more editing pass over the new story I just sent to them&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nBut, as I posted on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/GrayRinehart\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/people\/Gray-Rinehart\/100000190621074\">Facebook<\/a> and have told anyone who would listen, I liken this to a great drive off the tee that makes up for dozens of hooks and slices and keeps the weekend golfer coming back for more. Even a minor writing triumph like this is enough to keep me coming back.<\/p>\n<p>To take that metaphor a little further, I left this story on the green and need to make a good putt to finish well. The nice thing is that every semi-finalist story is critiqued by the contest director, and her comments were direct and insightful. Now I just have to figure out how to fix the problem she found in such a way that the story has a more satisfying ending &#8212; though I wish that was going to be as easy as it sounds. But if I read the green correctly and stroke the ball well, I might yet make something of this story.<\/p>\n<a class=\"synved-social-button synved-social-button-share synved-social-size-24 synved-social-resolution-single synved-social-provider-facebook nolightbox\" data-provider=\"facebook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Share on Facebook\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.grayrinehart.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-json%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F526&#038;t=On%20Reaching%20the%20Semi-Finals%20For%20the%20First%20Time&#038;s=100&#038;p&#091;url&#093;=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.grayrinehart.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-json%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F526&#038;p&#091;images&#093;&#091;0&#093;=&#038;p&#091;title&#093;=On%20Reaching%20the%20Semi-Finals%20For%20the%20First%20Time\" style=\"font-size: 0px;width:24px;height:24px;margin:0;margin-bottom:5px;margin-right:5px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Facebook\" title=\"Share on Facebook\" class=\"synved-share-image 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finalists, on which you&#8217;ll find yours truly &#8230; marking the first time I&#8217;ve made it to that level of the contest. It feels good to have made it past the &#8220;Honorable Mention&#8221; hurdle, at \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/reaching-semi-finals-first-time\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}