Still-Gate: How a Five Letter Error Made Me Question Everything

Last Friday, August 11, I logged into my email to make sure I wasn't missing anything glaring at work while enjoying a Florida beach vacation with my family. I was surprised to find two comments of congratulations from my fellow writers on a poem I had submitted to the Short and Sweet Challenge. It was a surprise because the challenge winners were supposed to be announced on Thursday, August 10. Even though I never expected my poem, "On Marriage and Summer Squash," to place, I had scanned the winner announcements on Vocal dutifully that Thursday and experienced a brief second of disappointment that I wasn't listed there before reminding myself I have yet to crack poetry and that I could try again another time. Then it was back to the beach with my family for some much-needed sun, salt, and sand.

So WHY, then, was my poem being congratulated by Friday? I knew it hadn't placed in the contest. WHAT was happening? I headed over to Vocal's challenge winners announcement to do some sleuthing. Sure enough, there was an update...

The long and short of it seemed to be that there were several poems originally selected that broke the challenge rules. For this challenge, we were supposed to use only words with four letters or less. Some of the poems initially selected had five letter words. So Vocal chose some additional runner-ups who more closely followed the four-letter rule...and my poem was one of the newly selected ones! My first time placing in a poetry contest - I was elated!

I had already told my husband that the poem he, as my favorite muse, inspired was selected as a runner-up by the time I started scrolling the comments of the updates, curious as to which comments on Thursday had prompted Vocal to choose more runner-ups. I noticed the longest thread of comments was all about one of the new poems which had used the word "still," which is five letters, not four.

My heart sank.

I immediately remembered a line in my poem that used the word "still" and it hit me right away that all of these comments were about my work.

I'm a blusher and a flusher. Whenever I am stressed, nervous, excited, or basically in any type of enhanced emotional state, I blush furiously and sometimes break out in red hives all over my face and chest. My husband was so confused. I just told him I placed in this challenge, and yet there I was breaking out, sweating and looking like I was going to puke with no explanation.

I think my immediate reaction was pure embarrassment and just feeling stupid. I'm thirty years old and should be able to count. I was kicking myself hard for leaving the word "still" in my poem throughout multiple days of writing, proofreading, revising, and sharing with others. I felt bad that my poem was selected and that other writers were upset. I felt disappointed that I went from feeling so excited to feeling like my poem wasn't deserving of the recognition. The negative comments about the word "still" definitely outnumbered the positive comments on the poem itself. I know writers have to have thick skin, but I was feeling incredibly humiliated and definitely questioning everything about my submission to the challenge. Such a silly mistake that should have been easily caught, but I am the kind of person who fixates on mistakes, especially the totally silly ones, and really beats myself up. So needless to say, I spent several days really putting myself through it.

But I knew I needed to rally. I've been working with my therapist a lot to reframe my perspectives and end my negative self-talk, so I employed some of the tools and strategies we've been practicing together, and here are my takeaways.

1. Nobody's Perfect

I was always held to a high standard of behavior and academics as a kid. The way that has translated into my adult life is that I spend a lot of time ensuring everything is as perfect as it can be: at home, at work, in my hobbies. It can be really exhausting. I hardly ever submit writing without checking and then double checking that it meets my high standards. I often read recently submitted pieces multiple times in the days following and go back in to edit a typo or to change one word that isn't quite right. Holding myself to high standards means that when mistakes do happen, it can feel crushing.

The truth of the matter, though, is that no one is perfect. I'm not perfect at writing. No matter how much I workshop a particular piece, I know rationally that there is always room to improve something. And while yes, counting a four-versus-five-letter word should be pretty simple, sometimes honest errors still happen. I think it is important to keep that in mind when we are interacting with other writers on the Vocal platform, and also when we are interacting with the Vocal team and judges themselves. I don't think Vocal intentionally chose a bunch of poems that broke the rules. I think they selected some poems that, like mine, looked "eye clean" without necessarily pausing to count every, single letter in every, single word.

2. Be Empathetic and Assume Best Intentions

I have to be transparent. At first, I felt hurt, and then honestly even a little bit angry, about comments that seemed to single out my poem. I think those emotions were coming from a place of writing something so heartfelt and authentic to the kind of relationship I have with my husband, and then feeling like the piece was being ragged on over one word. But I had to remind myself that if the poem had never been selected, no one would be mad about it. The negative response was due to the error in word count, not due to the rest of the writing or the subject of the poem itself. It made me feel a lot better to keep that in mind.

Personally, I am not a person who gets too hung up on challenge results or how other writers are meeting or breaking the rules for challenges. I like to stay in my lane as much as possible and produce work I can be proud of, whether or not it wins a contest. I have been around on Vocal for a long time and can think of a handful of contests where winning entries were over a word count or other rules were skirted. But I started thinking about how I would feel if I was really expecting to win or really felt like my work had a good chance. I know I spent a long time trying to ensure that all the words in my poem were under the character count limit, and even though I failed in that, I am sure there are lots of writers who did it successfully. I tried to imagine how they were feeling when they stuck to the rules and poems that broke the rules placed. Putting it into perspective helped me understand why many people were upset. I also realized that even though the comments section left me feeling like my poem was under attack, that was probably not the authors' intentions. They wanted to ensure the integrity of the contest and provide feedback to Vocal, not to roast me or my poem. I instantly felt better when I put that into perspective for myself.

3. Learn From Mistakes

Gosh, this one is hard, isn't it? As human beings, our first response when we make a mistake is often to get sad and/or mad, shut down, and say things like "well, I might as well just quit." Somewhere inside of our weird little brains lives this inclination to give up when things get hard, when something we were proud of doesn't get the kind of reception we were hoping for, when we try and fail at something. It's easy to quit. It's easy to practice negative self-talk, blame ourselves for something as simple as a missed word count.

I actually wondered if the powers that be at Vocal felt just as embarrassed over choosing entries with five-letter words as I did for submitting, and then placing on, an entry with a five-letter word. When I looked at Vocal's example, I could see how they tried to be responsible to the community and make things right...even if the attempted correction was also not perfect (enter: my poem from stage right).

One of my big takeaways from being involved in how all of it played out and then being reflective in the days following is that perfection is not attainable. No matter how hard we as individual writers, or a platform as large as Vocal, may try, we are going to get it wrong sometimes. The important thing is that we own it and apologize when it happens. So I would really like my fellow writers to know that I'm very sorry I missed a five-letter word while writing and proofreading and revising my poem. I never meant to sneak the word "still" in there and there are a myriad of four-letter words that could have replaced it without changing the ideas I was trying to convey. To everyone who correctly submitted a poem with only four-letter words, I understand how much effort you put into the writing and revision process. I hope you will be so good as to drop your entries into the comments here so that I can at least provide a read and a heart. I have so much respect for the other writers in this community, and I am very sorry if my poem "still" placing with it's five-letter word caused you disappointment and frustration.

Since my poem did not meet the rules of the contest, I want the community to know that I have donated my $25 in winnings to InsideOUT Writers, a nonprofit that is really meaningful to me. This organization provides creative writing classes to incarcerated youth in Los Angeles County juvenile halls. They also support them with successful reentry back into their communities upon release. I hope that in this way, I can give something back to other writers and begin to move towards correcting the error I made in my poem. You can learn more about this organization and its valuable work at their website or by viewing the video below:

I also want my fellow writers in the Vocal community to know that I am recommitting myself to the proofreading and editing process. I am usually a very careful and details-oriented person, but obviously, I missed something in this challenge and I need to be more careful going forward. I promise to do this, and also always welcome any feedback on my work. Maybe as we are entering these challenges together, we can help each other out by following the "See Something, Say Something" rule. Personally, I would welcome comments from those who read my submissions if you happen to see a mistake or an error. This is how we can help each other improve our writing craft!

5. Stand By Your Work

At the end of the day, I know my poem missed the mark when it came to the rules of the challenge. I feel really badly about it. My initial reaction was embarrassment and feeling like my poem was very possibly garbage. I'm a little touchy about my poetry in the first place, because I'm more of a fiction and creative non-fiction writer, and I found myself instantly wishing Vocal had a delete button so I could just scrap the whole thing and pretend this particular challenge never happened.

But of course, that isn't realistic.

And as I talked with my loved ones about what happened and explained how I was feeling, they reminded me how special this poem was to me in the first place. I wrote it about my husband of seven years, a guy I have been more or less dating for thirteen years, and the message of simple, natural, easy love is what I wanted to pour into the poem because that's the kind of love he gives to me. You can read it here:

I never expected it to place. I'm happy the judges saw something good in it, even if they, like me, still missed a five a letter word. When it comes around full circle, I am very proud of this piece...and that was true before it ever caused an uproar. Writing, for me, isn't about winning contests or making some extra cash, although those things are nice. Writing is about putting my soul onto paper. It's about immortalizing the people and moments that are most important to me through my creative work. It's an outlet to release worries, fears, and emotions. It's a sandbox in which to exercise my imagination.

When people hand you a piece of their soul, please assume best intentions. Be empathetic. Be gentle. We're all in this together, writers. And I hope we can continue to work together to make this community the best it can be.