When Not winning is winning.

TRANSFORMING A LOSS INTO A GAIN.

Have you ever had a dream you so desperately longed to become reality?
One that was not so far-fetched but could open up a new world of possibilities.

That is what this is about.

Mine was to be a Hay House writer. The Hay House Writers competition – I thought, would be my ticket to making this dream a reality.

An external event outside my control that would change my life – if they chose me.

Winning the competition would put my story on the shelf and bring with it a potential career change, or so I thought.

I imagined it all, the book cover and the amazing book launch I’d have. I saw it all in my fantasy of what could be. I would win and then everything else would fall into place.

For years I’d been writing stories and dreaming of one day publishing a book.
It wasn't until I saw a Facebook post about a writer’s workshop that I collected my stories, wrote some more and ended up with a completed manuscript.

Or so I thought.

Workshop attendees could enter a writer’s competition - the winning prize being a publishing contract with Hay House.

It gave me a deadline and motivation that had in the past somehow slipped away from me and saw me prioritise everything but writing....until then.

I knew it would be difficult but not impossible. I was determined to publish my book, and as the owner of many Hay House books, I desperately wanted to be a Hay House Writer.

To meet the deadline, I found myself on a last-minute writing trip to Phuket. Yes, I went to Phuket to write. Long story.

I wrote for hours all day, emerging from my room at happy hour to meet my cousins at the pool bar for a pre-dinner drink, my drink of choice - pina colada. A heavily watered-down pina colada.

So, I finished my book on time and entered it into the competition.
Pressing send on that email was one of the most excitingly nerve-racking things I've ever done. I felt both proud and exposed. My story was out there, being judged and was anything but traditional.

A mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

It was a story with a self-help chapter at the end that used the main charter as an example, or case study.

Writers around me told me I had to choose - non-fiction or fiction - I couldn't be both.
Something that was well and truly confirmed when on Valentine’s Day 2019 I learnt I did not win the Hay House Writers competition.

Before I lost the competition, I had given this event that was outside my control the power to dictate the possibility of my dreams and be responsible for an improvement in the quality of my own experience, situation, and self-worth. That was what I had done. While the nature of competitions means that there will be winners and losers, I couldn’t let this stop me get my book out.

Even though I didn’t win, the process gave me knowledge via access to new information and resources - that were otherwise foreign to me as a first-time writer. It made me move away from having another responsible for the achievement of my goals and dreams to becoming empowered to take whatever steps were necessary – to bring that dream to me.  

After a brief pause filled with disappointment, despair and now what? - I reached out to people with industry experience to help me work out my next step.

That’s when the wonderful people at KN literary connected me with Carolyn Flynn, whose words of encouragement and solid guidance led me to rewrite my book.
What started as a fictional book soon evolved into non-fiction.

A very necessary transformation that has continued to blossom into the form of unexpected opportunities.
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All thanks to a competition that motivated me to finish my book and showed me that not winning is winning.