Luck

Last week I went to the Midwest Writing Center’s annual meeting. At the conclusion of the business meeting a drawing was held. The prizes began with a nice selection of MWC Press books. The grand prize for many years has been a full enrollment for the David R. Collins Writers’ Conference held in late June. That amounts to three full days of workshops, readings, and a concluding lunch. An over $200 value in writerly bounty.

I’ve watched other people win and thought “Well, maybe next year” or “Maybe at the next Iron Pen contest”.

As it turned out This Was My Year!

And I almost missed it.

The people on either side of me won and I had to check out which books they picked. I also figured the luck for my row was already used up. So I was distracted when the next number was called. I looked at my ticket. It was my number. I had to ask “What did I win?”

It was the Big One!

I was surprised and happy all at once. (I’ll have to look up a better way to describe that in The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide To Character Expression by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi—later.)

So now I have a new set of lucky numbers.

I have to say that in this and in a great many other ways I’ve been luckier with the Midwest Writing Center than with any of the state lotteries.

My thanks for MWC being there and making the odds better for all of us writers.