So there's this contest

called the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. It's a pretty tough competition—national, grades 7 through 12, various and assorted competitions. Three rankings, and winning Gold? Earns you some serious moo-lah. Like, 10k serious. Money for college. And I'm entering this year.


So I'm nervous as hell. What do you do when you're up against thousands of other potentially probably better writers and artists, all clawing for the same title? It's not exactly Sun Tzu kind of tactics.

You look at the old winners and see what works.

And boy, they must be right about me. I'm a snob. I have to be, because if I'm not, then that means I'm not sophisticated enough, apparently, to understand or appreciate most of the contest entries. I mostly focused on Gold recievers. See what they wrote that was so good to get what they got.

I was a torsion of mixed emotions. Most of them, I thought, what the hell, I can do that, I can do better than that. Because I'm nothing if not modest. Others I had to look away, because I thought was going to throw up because of how good they were. Better than me, something I couldn't, can't, measure up to.

And then there were the ones where I simply had no idea what was going on. Poetry, mostly, and they had won gold, and I was confused, and it was contemporary, and it was all trying too hard. Like that quote from Stephen Dunn. “When people praise a poem that I can’t understand I always think they’re lying.”

It's intimidating, this mix of results, declared Gold, best of the best. And to the standards of high school, they were all good. I was in Plain Brown Wrapper for my Freshmen and Sophomore years. Oh, man, the things we'd have entered. The things people would approve. I felt pretentious and snooty, mostly because I thought I could write better than most of the entries we got. Something like truth, because for the most part, I could.

I felt big, important. Something I could do, contribute to. Big, big, big, arrogance.

Now I feel small.

This was actually supposed to be a post on how I feel that many teens don't have a really high expectation of literature, or a high quality in their writing. I was going to use examples like Twilight, and 50 shades, but I guess I'll save that for later.

So I don't know what the hell I'm to do with myself. I went through almost all of them. A lot of the stories have similiar syntax, and even more commonly, the same phrases, and adjectives. What words they use, you'd swear it was the SAT study guide or something. All the same words for different things. The word 'molasses' came up a lot. I don't know why, actually. Maybe people my age just like that word? Sugary adjective that implies sweetness and slowness.

Maybe that's the trick. Sweetness and slowness. I don't know much of either, but I can try. Make that my signature—I can sure try.