Worth a Punt, Innit.

This is for Harper Lewis' It's Not Fair rogue challenge. The mission, if I chose to accept it (and I did, obviously) was to write about a time I won unfairly.

Well, that should be easy! I never think I deserve the win. I am always my own worst critic. The tough part is picking one occasion.

I gave it some thought and this is what I came up with.

This isn't a recent one, but it's probably the biggest I can think of. It was a challenge right here on Vocal way, way back in 2023.

I started a new Thing that year. It's not a new concept by any stretch. I didn't invent it. It was new to me, though. I experienced a bit of a personal shift around that time. I decided to be a bit braver, to wear my Grown Up pants a bit more often. Take some chances. My own personal mantra became:

It's worth a punt innit.

If this is a phrase you're not familiar with, "punt" in this context means, trying. Taking a chance. Giving it a shot.

Vocal were doing the Vocal Writing Awards that year. I had a story that had been sitting in my drafts for an embarassingly long time. Months. Since another challenge, actually. One with a big prize pot. (Do you remember when they were thousands of dollars?) And a Zoom call with Christopher Paolini. (Glad I didn't win that one. I would have been tongue-tied.)

I wrote a story for that challenge about a dragon (of course) but I could never quite finish it. I wrestled with it every which way, and in the end, the deadline came and went. I discovered that Douglas Adams was right: those things really do make a wonderful whooshing noise as they whiz by.

That was the piece I entered in the Vocal Writing Awards. With a dragon centre-stage, it had to go to the Fantasy Fiction category.

But here is the thing, and you probably already guessed it: it still wasn't finished.

I wrote a bit more, and tidied it up, and then, with another deadline threatening to whoosh at me in a very personal and condescending way, I submitted it as it was, my own words of wisdom echoing in my skull.

Ah, well. It's worth a punt, innit?

Dear reader, it bloody well was worth a punt. It won first place in its category.

Here it is: Meat, Walking

As per the premise of Paolini's Fantasy Fiction challenge, the story is about a dragon finding a child in the forest.

I love that story. It's special to me for a lot of reasons. It even found a home in my second collection: Summer Leaves. This is to say, I'm not ashamed of it, by any stretch. I like what I did with the prompt. I liked the characters, and their voices, the way they evolve. They are very real to me, inside my own head. I can see them very vividly, in a way that I can't see, for example, an apple or an elephant, if someone asked me to picture it.

All the same, my story was missing a vital component: the ending! What happens next?

Maybe we might still find out.

I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you, in the most emphatic terms, that if you're sitting on something, wondering if it's good enough, if it's worth taking a shot...

Yes!! It's worth a punt.

Maybe it's not an entry for a challenge. It might be a job you aren't sure if you should apply for. Or someone you fancy that you haven't asked out. Go for it. It's worth a punt.

It's nice to get a win. As it turns out, it's still pretty nice even if it feels not-wholly-deserved. Maybe this is a neat reminder that, after all, we are all flawed and unfinished, no?

Still, it really wasn't fair to the other authors who actually, you know, finished their stories.

Sorry, guys.

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Thank you for reading!

Here is Harper Lewis' challenge again, if you want to have a bash: