This morning, I had three separate dreams about the same thing: the writing contest that my sister and I entered at the beginning of August. Each dream had a different review of or reaction to my contest entry. In the first one, someone whose name was written in Korean Hangul felt “alienated”; in the second one, a panel of judges described my entry as “this odd little project that kept hanging on”; in the third one, my entry was competing against my husband’s, who thought he’d enter the contest just for fun.
In all three of the dreams, though, I made it to finalist status.
Now, you know what they say about these kinds of dreams: they predict the opposite of what happens in real life. You dream about winning, you’re probably going to lose. But, sometimes clichés are stranger than fiction. At 10AM this morning, the organizers announced the names of the finalists on their website.
And the gist of all three dreams came true; I actually did make it to finalist status in the contest.
(!)
I know. I’d been saying that I hadn’t really entered to win. But I hadn’t realized how much I wanted it until my subconscious hit me with three of those dreams in rapid succession this morning. The website kept appearing, over and over again. I actually clicked on it in my sleep. I’m not sure the Internet’s ever appeared in my dreams before, as hard as that is to believe.
Here’s another cliché, though: I am so happy and honored just to make it to finalist status. In an excellent series of blog posts about getting an MFA, the author Alexander Chee suggests that you shouldn’t apply to MFA programs without publishing more or (hey!) placing in a contest first. I don’t think that he is suggesting this as a form of gatekeeping (e.g., “only published writers should have MFAs!”), but as a way to explain that you shouldn’t see acceptance into an MFA program as your only ticket to being a writer. In other words, you should have a sense of how your writing’s received outside of an MFA program before you even begin applying. So I see this finalist status is a stamp of approval for my creative writing, from women who have years of professional publishing experience.
Or maybe “stamp” isn’t quite the right metaphor. I worked so hard as a student, as a graduate student, for something that felt like validation. But unlike my academic grades, this doesn’t feel like validation so much as affirmation and confirmation. Validation: well, maybe you can do this, because we say so. Affirmation: yes, you can do this! but you knew that already. It’s showed me, from a different angle, how much I want to be a writer again.
End of the Miss Universe clichés for now. But thank goodness there’s no bathing suit competition.
*****
In other news, the book project continues to grow. And I’ve found that opening these doors have helped others to reopen. Just watching the water lit up by a boat last night made me think of a memorable night we spent on a cormorant fishing boat in Japan.
- While I finished (re)reading my dad’s manuscript, I still need to take the time to write about all about what I found. Interestingly, it felt unfinished in certain ways, so I need to write about what I didn’t find, too. So after I write that, I want to reread a few other memoirs of internment, such as Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s Farewell to Manzanar. How did Houston’s memoir succeed, to the extent that it was adapted for a TV miniseries? What was the appeal?
- My brother-in-law has suggested that I find out more about my dad’s military service, and that I may even be able to locate those who were in his unit. There are unit reunions, and so on. Fascinating!
- Have you been following this series in the New York Times? All about technology and attention span and memory. I’m struck by this portion of the article: “At the University of California, San Francisco, scientists have found that when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory of the experience.” Maybe rats need to blog. Or turn off their Twitter feed. Or both.
- I am continuing my e-mail correspondence with my dad’s friend, who first commented here. She knows something about the writing of my dad’s book, since (I think) they kept in touch during that time of his life. She wants to give me some memories of my dad, partly because she lost her own dad at a relatively young age. “I too have a drive to understand more about my father,” she wrote in a recent message. “You never get around to asking all the questions you could have asked, no matter when they leave you.”