The Improbable Happened

Summary

A writer reflects on their unexpected win in the Medium Writer's Challenge and the personal and professional journey that led to their success.

Abstract

The author, a freelance creative, recounts their astonishment at winning both their prompt category (Death) and the Grand Prize in the Medium Writer's Challenge. Despite a lifetime of creative endeavors, this recognition marks an unprecedented milestone in their career. The essay they submitted, initially conceived as a screenplay, is a personal narrative about the death of their grandmother and the impact of that event on their life. The writer shares their transition from film production to teaching yoga, and eventually to writing, detailing the challenges faced during the pandemic, which led to a period of introspection and the revisiting of past memories. The article emphasizes the importance of storytelling, the serendipitous timing of when stories reveal themselves to us, and the power of writing to transform even the most mundane experiences into something beautiful and meaningful. The writer also touches on the increased national discourse on mental illness and suicide, subjects previously taboo, and expresses gratitude for the platform to contribute to this conversation.

Opinions

The author believes that recognition and financial reward in the writing field are significant, marking a turning point in their career.
They express a deep connection to storytelling, having explored various forms of creative expression throughout their life.
The writer values the beauty of language and the rhythm of words, finding joy in crafting evocative and specific visual language.
They see the pandemic as a challenging period that necessitated a shift in focus from storytelling to immediate financial concerns.
The author appreciates the Medium Writer's Challenge for providing a catalyst to overcome inertia and resume writing.
They feel that personal stories emerge on their own timetable, revealing themselves when the writer is ready to receive and articulate them.
The writer acknowledges the importance of the Medium platform in allowing stories to be shared widely, like seeds dispersed by the wind.
They are humbled by the opportunity to contribute to the conversation on mental health and suicide, issues made more relevant by current societal discourse.
The author cherishes the memory of their family members, wishing they could have shared in the writer's recent success.
They encourage others to continue writing, viewing it as a necessary and therapeutic act, especially during difficult times.

The Improbable Happened

Like many of you, I entered the Medium Writer’s Challenge hopeful but not expecting much. I have never won anything in my life; why would this time be different? Except that it was. Astonishingly so.

Last week, Jermaine Hall, VP of Content at Medium, called and informed me of my wins for both my prompt (Death) and the Grand Prize. I am still in a state of fizzy shock, almost constantly headachy and with rattled nerve endings that make me feel over-caffeinated and slightly queasy.

In this surreal state I find myself in, I feel the need to describe as much to myself as to you how this happened, to push it like a handprint into Grauman’s cement, to make it more real. Writing something down makes it more real, doesn’t it?

I do not know why this moment happened as it did at this time in my life. I’ve been a freelance creative all my working life, and nothing has remotely come close to the pop of recognition or financial reward as this has. I have considered myself a storyteller since I was a child, but it took many forms of expression and lots of frustration and anguish over the years in the search to figure out where my ideas could best flourish.

I wrote plays as required by my theatre degree in college and then spent ten years on crews in film production, writing spec screenplays as a side hustle. The events of my Medium story were first the inciting incident to one of these, all unproduced and now stored in basement boxes. After I quit the film business and started teaching yoga, I divorced my first husband, met and married my second, had a baby girl, began a mobile wellness business, blogged for it, and published a book about mindful living. (I sound like a walking, talking Los Angeles cliché, don’t I?)

The personal essays I wrote for small sections of my book stirred interest in doing more of it. So I pulled out the screenplay about my grandmother Mamie’s death and reworked it into essay form, excavating details of memories I had overlooked. Other memories from my childhood surfaced, as did stories from my father and his family of raconteurs on which I grew up. Soon I had a nice collection and a unifying theme. I was trucking along quite nicely, excited to have finally found my literary medium, as it was.

Then the pandemic hit, I shut down my business for 16 months, and like much of the world of small business entrepreneurs, wondered if it was the end of the road for my endeavors. For a year plus, I wrangled with various government programs trying to scrape out any pandemic assistance I could find to help keep the lights on in our house. (My husband, also a freelance creative, was doing the same.) Writing about my past, digging up memories, even the happy ones, would take a back seat to the present-day nightmare unfolding all around us.

Running across some Twitter chatter about the MWC this past summer inspired me to pull off the cobwebs of disinterest and lethargy that I had let settle on my stories. I urgently needed to exercise my flaccid writing muscles. The deadline wasn’t so soon that I had to panic, but having a story in my back pocket, semi-ready to go was a big help.

It’s worth noting that I could not have written this version of the story at any earlier point in my life, certainly not right after my grandmother died. It took a long time for me to think about it, process my feelings toward it, and hold it within me. I feel our stories appear to us on an ethereal timetable that is beyond our dominion. They reveal themselves when we are ready to receive them.

Eventually, my effort became a way to describe a bizarre, brutal day spent doing dreadfully banal tasks as dictated by the demands of state bureaucracy, with the most beautiful and lyrical language I could conjure up. I love the sound and rhythm of certain words, placed just so within a sentence to create a musical pattern. I love creating a visual language that is evocative and specific to a time and place. This part of writing somewhat makes up for the other parts that can often feel like bad times in a dental chair.

A fortunate coincidence with my story is that it has dovetailed with an unexpected gift that the pandemic has given us. As a result, there is now more open national discourse around suicide and mental illness, still taboo subjects when my grandmother took her life. Indeed, I never heard anyone from my grandmother’s generation and background talking about mental illness where I grew up. I’m not sure they were even familiar with what psychotherapy was precisely, much less its benefits. My parents probably less so, but these weren’t things I ever heard discussed in our family.

Mental illness and suicide are heavy subjects; I do not consider myself any kind of authority on the topics. However, I am very grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the larger conversation around them that the Medium judges have granted me. For many reasons, the MWC is important, but particularly for me, it is a great privilege to share my story with all of you. It’s a bittersweet moment, for sure. I desperately wish my mother, grandmother, and father were still alive to experience it with me.

It is a wondrous thing that the Medium platform affords, this space to offer beauty and art and magic in stories put forth into the world like wind-blown dandelion seeds, available to anyone who wishes to do so. I think Carrie Fisher said it best: “Take your broken heart and make it into art.” I encourage you to keep writing because I will, too. We all must, especially now.