It actually was my own fault

It actually was my own fault. There was a writing competition in a nearby town holding its first ever book festival, and friends had submitted entries, and reminded me of it for several weeks. As usual, procrastination in person, I kept putting off thinking about it, let alone writing anything. I have so many stories I could have entered but the stipulation was that entries should not have been previously published, and of course, everything I write I share her.

Last night, the last night entries could be submitted, I focussed and wrote a story. It was an interpretation of something which had happened to my dad while he was in the army during the war. I finished it, corrected it, edited it, read it out loud, sent it to friends for comments, read it again, filled in the entry requirements and sent it. I then set about writing a second story which had been brewing for some time. Again, I finished it, corrected it, edited it, read it out loud, sent it to friends for comments, read it again, and was checking what I had to submit as part of the entry process when somehow I deleted the story!! I can’t imagine how that happened, but I set about trying to find it, to see if it had been autosaved, to see if it had somehow saved into a different file or folder. I asked advice, I searched everywhere, I went through all the systems for finding accidentally delegated documents.

About ten minutes before the closing of entries I realised that it was gone, that I was never going to find it because somehow I had deleted it. The story had a very personal element to it, and I was very annoyed – and tried not to be upset that it had gone into a permanent waste bin. I had to accept that I couldn’t enter it for the competition and comforted myself with thoughts that there were elements of it I might want to change.

I was still annoyed today, hours after the closing deadline for the comp… but I will write it again, and then I will share it here.