Getting Published and Contest wins

I have normally found that humor does not win you contests. Seems to me like people actually do not like to laugh – Life is grim, Life is earnest and he who laughs at it is at best frivolous and at worst a fool. Maybe, I am getting too grim in my turn!

I can well imagine that contest judges find it difficult to take a humor post as a serious entry for the contest. “What do you mean it is a serious entry? It is humorous for Christ’s sake! How can a post be humorous and serious at the same time?” they probably say while tossing the entry into the nearest recycle bin.

In all my contesting days, only Lakme tried to console me for my post “A Season of Hope, A Season of Despair”. Maybe they got mislead by the title which is a quote from Charles Dickens and, as anyone can tell you - but for an aberration in ‘Pickwick Papers’ - he is as bleak an author as you can get. Why, the man even wrote a book called ‘Bleak House’!

I put my theory to the test by writing posts practically dripping with tears. Of those posts, my stories “The Gates of Hell” won a Write-up Café contest and “Yesterdays and Tomorrows” won the Blogaton. Now I had found the recipe to win contests – adopt the ‘Life is Stern, Life is Earnest’ philosophy. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. Even when I fractured a right hand, I could not find so much pathos in me that I could readily weep copiously into my blog.

This year, strangely, humor seems to have found favor of a sudden. To win one of the second prizes for ‘Straighten up or die’ in the Sunsilk contest was, perhaps, not too outré considering that Sunsilk was asking for humor posts. To win the Blogaton for “The Silent World”, however, was one hell of a surprise. (I do not agree that my weeping copiously about how I was participating with a fractured right hand got me the sympathy vote!)

Am I forgetting something? Ah yes, so what is all that ‘Getting Published’ in the title about? Well! Mahavir Publishers ran a short story contest for a collection that they intend publishing entitled “Uff Ye emotions” and, apparently, I am one of the ten authors selected for it. This was not a humorous story, however. Banish your incredulity for the moment for what I have written is a serious love story!

P.S: If you think this sort of behavior from me - writing love stories, I mean - ought to be encouraged you could go to this link and click on the Heart there, before or after reading that post!

If you want to try any of my humor or fiction, click on those words to find an index of the posts!