2021: a timeline of one hundred and eleven failures

a memoir

i graduated from my screenwriting degree in late 2020, while i was in northern queensland in the wnbl hub.

i had been awarded an awg mentorship prize with elise mccredie (stateless), and similarly offered further mentorship with sue maslin (the dressmaker) but, though honoured, when i came back to melbourne i delayed reaching out to either to further develop my graduate television pilot.

unlike the majority of my classmates who had dreamed of being in the film industry since they were children, i knew i was not ready to move immediately into an internship in a television room. because i had always dreamed of the literary industry.

for the three years of my course, spread over four, i stored a secret.

the raging love of art inside me leant to books before it did film. as we dissected commercial movies and independent short films and classic television episodes, i wanted to be reading. as we wrote scripts for comedies and dramas and experimental horrors, i wanted to be writing prose.

i had a 100,000 word novel that needed editing, and i was going to give myself one year to accumulate enough writing accolades to make myself legitimate enough to submit that manuscript to publishing houses. 

the fine arts (screenwriting) course created me as a professional writer, and any potential or talent i have is a credit to the brilliant artists who are the lecturers at the victorian college of the arts, but i felt like an imposter. because though i want to be it all — a filmmaker, a screenwriter, a director and an actor and a producer, i want to be an author first.

so in the final year of my degree, while the introductions to established producers and executives increased despite virtual classes, i smiled and networked even as i formed a loose, shameful plan. i was too embarrassed to tell my lecturers or classmates, in case they confirmed me as a film fraud, but i had a one hundred thousand word novel that needed editing, and i was going to give myself one year to accumulate enough writing accolades to make myself legitimate enough to submit that manuscript to publishing houses. 

there were two main strands of plan: literary magazines and writing competitions. i had identified the prominent literary magazines every australian author seems to be published in: overland, meanjin, island, kill your darlings, griffith review, voiceworks, westerly, southerly, abr, going down swinging, along with the glorious, smaller and emerging publications.

i wanted my name in them all.

that was half my goal for the year: publication in as many literary magazines as possible. for the writing competitions, i did not even want to win. i would take anything — finalist, shortlist, longlist, the most diluted of honourable mentions. that was the other half of the goal, the only real one: collecting any form of recognition.

i would take anything — finalist, shortlist, longlist, the most diluted of honourable mentions. that was the only actual goal for the year: any form of recognition.

some writers talk of struggling with discipline. i was ready to: i had spent almost two decades within the rigid structure of institutional learning, towed along by deadlines and stern external support, and then i was thrown out into the freedom of nothing. i had no system except my own questionable regulation. but the discipline part was easy.

i created a schedule of every writing competition and literary magazine and residency, scholarship, grant and mentorship award i could find, divided them into each month and set them out in a table with closing dates, themes, word counts, cost of entry, and potential prize money — and began to write. 

in january,

i worked mostly on the novel. this was during the bleary, broken existence of another one of melbourne’s lockdowns and i would often spend ten hours flat writing, moving approximately every hour from my desk that was my bed to fill my bottle of water and excrete the water from the previous bottle. often i would write until five am, fall asleep until eleven am that morning, eat and begin writing by twelve, write until seven pm and have dinner, then write after dinner until the early morning again. it was a privilege to be able to do this: i was living at home during the pandemic, with my parents and family, not able to work but still able to live safely. writing, and art in general, is a privilege in this way. it is important to acknowledge its inherent elitism and rally against the consequent lack of accessibility or crucial perspectives and talented voices will continue to be excluded. i entered only two competitions in january. during that haze of novel-writing, i wrote my first serious short story. it was for overland’s kuracca prize, a three thousand word limit and a fifty-six dollar entry fee because it was cheaper to take out an annual subscription to the magazine, and i was trying to be kind to our arts community against the wilderness of a pandemic.

i also submitted to the australian society of authors mentorship prize, which involved sending the first ten pages of a novel, plus a three-hundred word statement. it cost sixty-seven dollars, which included a compulsory membership fee to the asa. i am, notoriously, opposed to spending money. i despise shopping, loathe dining out and am generally averse to most forms of expenditure. but i knew i wanted to attempt as many opportunities as i could find. i consulted with myself sensibly and negotiated a contract: for one year, i would be prepared to sacrifice some of my savings to access those opportunities. i would hopefully win one, to break even enough to go again, otherwise i would reassess at the end of the year. it felt like a wholesome form of gambling, just with the added stakes of overall confidence and personal dignity.  

in february,

i wrote my first serious poem called the turkeys and sent it into the cloncurry prize for twenty-five dollars. i entered the tasmanian writers' prize for twenty dollars with a three thousand word short story. i wrote three micro-fiction stories for microflix which was free to enter, and submitted a six thousand word story to the kyd new australian fiction, which cost forty dollars as submissions are only accepted from magazine subscribers. by now, the failures had begun. i received, to my naïve horror, approximately five cursory rejection emails. a little desperate for any affirmation, i submitted a poem to a smaller literary magazine in aniko press. in retribution for my superiority, i was as unsuccessful. 

in march,

i wrote an eight hundred word monologue called the cupboard of hoods for clearway 2021. i felt optimistic as i sent off my fifteen dollars: between twelve and fifteen pieces were chosen. the odds were better than the other competitions which i had learnt often did not even have a shortlist, just three winners plucked from, as the regretful emails informed, many hundreds sometimes thousands of entries. my monologue was not plucked. the australian writer’s centre started its furious fiction competition, a daily prompt every day for a month. i planned to enter every day — five hundred words for five hundred dollars seemed an efficient way to claw back the entry fees i had already offered up. i entered once, was not successful and never entered again. i wrote the intricacy of magpies in three thousand words and spent fifteen dollars entering it into the peter carey short story award. i spent twenty-five dollars and seven thousand words for the griffith review emerging voices competition. i wrote my first non-fiction pitch, and sent it to kyd. i wrote two stories of exactly fifty words for miniature. really felt confident. did not hear back. i wrote one hundred and fifty lines of my first children’s rhyming poem for the caterpillar poetry prize. submission cost fourteen euros, which was twenty-one dollars and eighty-two cents i never saw again.

for a while i was safe within the protective, smug label of new graduate. then i was safe in not having any results to share because competition winners had not yet been announced. then i became a liar.

i decided to believe the emails that the art itself was not necessarily bad, just not being selected for any number of reasons in that specific instance, so reused the turkeys as a submission for both meanjin and overland. they both thanked me as they regurgitated this reassurance, and declined. 

for a while i was safe within the protective, smug label of new graduate. then i was safe in not having any results to share because the competition winners had not yet been announced. then i became a liar. for months, when i was asked, i would lie about still waiting for results. soon, i would say, each time i was asked, the judging process is a gruelling process with so many entries. well, good luck, the inevitable response would be, let me know when you find out. and i would smile and lie again by saying: sure. 

in april,

i entered the cya novel manuscript competition, which required five thousand words of my novel manuscript and a six hundred word synopsis, and cost twenty-two dollars. i wrote a two thousand word story for the newcastle short story award and submitted it for sixteen dollars and fifty cents. i entered the turkeys again into the banjo paterson writing awards for fifteen dollars. i entered the f(riction) spring literary competition for fifteen american dollars and six thousand words; then wrote the cracks, a five thousand word memoir for the furphy literary award. i woke up each day and wrote for hours into hours and tried not to look at my emails. 

in may,

i wrote two thousand words of a new story for the questions writing prize. i entered the abr elizabeth jolley short story prize with five thousand words and twenty-five dollars. i applied to be an artist at the 2021 national young writers’ festival. i entered the bristol short story prize for four thousand words and nine euros. i tried the cordite poetry review, then the meanjin x university of melbourne competition with two poems. i read the cracks again, edited out a couple of spelling errors, and entered it into the gloria anderlini (fawq) memoir competition for ten dollars. i wrote five hundred words for the grieve writing project because it had over seven thousand dollars in prizes which atoned for the sixteen dollars and fifty cents entry fee.

i attempted the bath novel award, which asked for the first five thousand words of a novel plus a one page synopsis and cost twenty-eight euros. i kissed my graduate screenplay apologetically and sent its seventy script pages off to the shore scripts screenwriting competition for forty-five american dollars. i deciphered what “twenty thousand characters” meant and entered the positive future competition. i stumbled across the bridport prize and wrote an eery five thousand word narrative called the face paintings, entering it for twelve euros. i also wrote two hundred and fifty words for the bridport prize flash fiction category which cost nine euros to submit. i sent off three thousand words for the big issue fiction edition. 

it seemed fragile and arrogant to only share information with others when they were successes. i forced myself to shift. i began to answer honestly when people asked: rejection after rejection, i’d say, but you hang in there. i was warm and self-deprecating enough to move people out of their initial sympathetic panic: my failures were received with light humour and condolences by everybody except my grandmother who, with no bias, was outraged by the clear lack of adept judges.

in june,

i touched my novel again for the book pipeline unpublished contest: five thousand words and a one-page synopsis with a forty-five american dollars entry fee. i wrote sugar skin for the bruce dawe national poetry prize, and entered it along with the cupboard of hoods. i then threw them both into the poetry london prize, which cost eight euros each, because by now i was quietly numb with despair. i filmed myself pitching my screenplay, and submitted it and the full script to the impact screenwriting intensive. i entered the turkeys into the newcastle poetry prize for thirty-three dollars which felt hefty but first place was fifteen thousand dollars and second place five thousand dollars — along with all three categories, including sugar skin in the poetry category, into the wyndham writing awards, mostly because it was free to enter. 

the rejections trickled then flooded in and i crossed them off on my schedule and continued to wade through the weeks. i had been rejected at least thirty-two times by the time, halfway through june, i received an email to say i had been shortlisted for the gloria anderlini memoir competition, and that the winners would be announced in july. 

july came,

and the awards ceremony was cancelled because of the pandemic. i never heard anything more. but the shortlisting was enough: i chewed on the brief indulgence of hope until it no longer had any flavour. i submitted three thousand words of my novel to the generous and free richell prize. i submitted ten thousand words, plus a pitch, of the same novel for the ray koppe asa young writers fellowship and residency for thirty-five dollars. they received three hundred applications and selected one. despite the great odds, the one was not mine. 

in august,

i sent out a different novel sample of ten thousand words, plus manuscript details, for the the next chapter. the fellowship initiative from the wheeler centre is potent in its provision of support and opportunity, and i have spent every year of the four years of its existence yearning for it. i consequently surrendered many hours of my life analysing the fluidity of each word in each sentence for my 2021 application. i sent sugar skin out again, this time as a memoir for the lane cove literary awards, and a different short story, for fifteen dollars per entry. for westerly magazine, i submitted the intricacy of magpies. for island, i submitted three poems, including the turkeys and sugar skin. i entered the masters review short story award for twenty american dollars and six thousand words. i wrote my first murder mystery for the scarlet stiletto awards, with five thousand words costing twenty-seven dollars and nineteen cents to enter. i sent sugar skin off again for stonnington library’s what's your story? competition. by now, my daily schedule was integrated with rejection emails. i went to sleep to rejection emails. i woke up to rejection emails. i brushed my teeth, morning and night and lunchtime, to polite, apologetic, courteous, empty rejection. seven am. one am. eleven pm. six pm. i jotted them all into the schedule. i wrote anyway. i waded. 

in september,

i cried a lot about basketball and wrote a three thousand word piece of creative nonfiction for the 2021 deakin university nonfiction prize. i thought i was going to win. i did not. i spent thirty-five dollars applying for the affirm press mentorship award at varuna with the first ten thousand words of my novel manuscript. i wrote two thousand words of memoir for the sbs emerging writers' competition. i also thought i was going to win this. i did not. i tried sending two pieces of poetry to a smaller but popular magazine again. baby teeth magazine cost me three dollars to submit and did not accept me. similarly, i went back to aniko press with the cupboard of hoods and another poem. similarly, i was unsuccessful. voiceworks is a prestigious literary magazine for writers under the age of twenty-five. with the deep, creaking humiliation of age in this deadline approaching, i gave up sending childhood musings and submitted two stronger fiction pieces, including the intricacy of magpies, and one poem, being the turkeys. i was kindly declined. i discovered sam george-allen’s first word journal, and submitted the cupboard of hoods. i submitted again to the masters review. i entered [untitled] short story competition 2021 with both the face paintings and the cracks. i sent three poems, including the turkeys and sugar skin, to the paris review. i pitched a non-fiction article about emotional and physical injury to voiceworks, then a non-fiction article about cocktails and pandemics to kyd. island opened for both their australian nature writing project and for general non-fiction submissions. i sent them the turkeys as general non-fiction. i then left it too late to write anything new for the nature writing so broke ethical rules by reformatting the turkeys ten minutes before the deadline and sending it in for that, too.

in october,

my bemused ego thought perhaps my talent was not registered in australia and needed to be more serious in venturing overseas. the internationally-renowned guernica received a seven thousand word story from me. i entered litmag’s virginia woolf award for short fiction for twenty-seven dollars and ninety-six cents. i looked into some american literary magazines, so sent pieces off to west branch magazine, one story, and, at a new low for my bloated audacity, the new yorker with the face paintings. i tussled between economy and dignity and sheer, base confidence so sent a short fiction to chaotic merge magazine, a small online magazine that charges four dollars and thirty-five cents for a submission and does not pay its authors. it also declined. i had a sudden urge to submit a picture storybook to hachette australia, so i wrote a pitch and cover letter for the children’s rhyming poem and sent that in. i submitted a short fiction to overland, and then sent sugar skin to going down swinging because it asked for pieces up to two thousand words about love. i applied for a scholarship to the faber writing academy with a cover letter and a one thousand word sample of prose. i submitted the intricacy of magpies to meanjin for two dollars. i sent the murder story to lamplight magazine.

i could not demand hope from myself. i did not really need it ultimately anyway. all i needed was to keep submitting.

some writers might say it is important to maintain hope.

i disagree. in those weeks of emails with no other leading phrase except ‘unfortunately’, i could not demand hope from myself. there was not much left in the hope tank. ultimately, i did not really need it from myself anyway, all i needed was to keep submitting. i just needed to use the energy to persist. over and over, i wrote new stories and sent them out and edited them and sent them out again until they became old stories and newer drafts. i submitted each with no genuine hope, only the desperate sense of persisting anyway. i had over fifty, thick rejection emails by the time sam george-allen, on the 25th of october, wrote to me saying she enjoyed the cupboard of hoods and was accepting it for publication. i gratefully emailed her back, then did not hear anything more.  

in november,

i entered the face paintings into the commonwealth short story prize 2022 because it seemed like a good idea. i reworked two pieces of prose poetry i had written as a teenager and sent them into the trouvaille review. i was declined by island magazine so sent them another piece of non-fiction. i entered the intricacy of magpies into the alan marshall short story prize and sugar skin into the nillumbik prize for contemporary writing for fifty dollars in total because there was approximately eighteen thousand dollars available in prizes. i sent three pieces of strange poetry into the tiny journal, because it called for strange poetry. my poetry was perhaps too strange. i entered the strange days 2021 writing award, and the mid north coast writers' centre short story competition for fifteen dollars. i tried overland with another piece of fiction, meanjin with three poems, including the cupboard of hoods and sugar skin, and, when overland opened for poetry, i sent those same three poems to them, too. i spent hours on an application for the sustaining creative workers initiative, sent a stronger piece to baby teeth magazine, tried demure with a little musing narrative, and submitted to the iconic heat literary magazine with a piece of memoir. 

in december,

i sent five thousand words of fiction into island magazine, then entered the face paintings into the djillong short story competition for twenty dollars and fifty cents. as we teetered on the edge of the year, i submitted memoir to agni magazine for three american dollars, and wrote an application for the design broadcasters for melbourne design week, which asked for a current cv and three samples of work. i gifted them sugar skin, the intricacy of magpies, and the face paintings, each piece so battered by their respective failures they felt wavering and hollow for me to read. 

the failures were brutal: draining and relentless and embarrassing. they were also intensely brilliant.

four days before the new year, on the 27th of december, the editor at island magazine, ben walter, emailed to inform me that even though he had rejected my submission for the australian nature writing cycle, he would like to publish the turkeys as part of island’s online non-fiction. i emailed him back, threatening to cry with gratitude. i finished the 2021 year with one hundred and eleven failures. i wish i had have kept a diary. they were brutal: draining and relentless and embarrassing. they were also intensely brilliant. i use the word failure to describe my current self sometimes and friends flinch in condemnation and pat me on the shoulder. failure is not an ugly word. it might be a loud word, but there is hard beauty in it: in its defiance and acceptance, in its weakness and bravery. i like to move in and suffer within all that painful, painful growth. 

in the last month, being march 2022, the turkeys has been published in island magazine. i am mid-edit with sam for the cupboard of hoods. the face paintings has been shortlisted for the djillong short story competition. the intricacy of magpies has been shortlisted for the alan marshall short story award. sugar skin received a rejection email one night, and then was shortlisted for the nillumbik prize for contemporary writing the next day.