I won the Caleb Award!

When a writer loses her confidence…

When you start out as a writer, everyone warns you about how well you need to be able to handle feedback and critique. But nobody warns you about what happens when you become dependent on others to determine whether your writing is goo

If I haven’t had an editor look at my story yet, it can’t possibly have the seed of something good.

If I haven’t changed the plot 3 times, how do I know the story is structurally sound?

If I absolutely love my first draft…so something must be wrong because there’s no way I have the writer instincts to create something beautiful on my own (despite devoting the last 5 years of my life to this craft).

As much as I LOVED being part of the Author Conservatory, post-graduation life has been an adjustment. For the first time since I was 14 years old, I don’t have someone looking over my shoulder to monitor my writing and offer feedback almost as soon as the letters appear on the screen. It’s both terrifying…and freeing.

Especially since…

I won the CALEB Award for Young Adult Fiction!

After spending so long working on edits, I realised I was way too tired of my stories to let them anywhere near sunlight in the foreseeable future. So, I submitted the first novel I ever wrote to the CALEB awards run by Omega Writers. It was meant to be a sort of last hurrah before I buckled down on my new novel

But that last hurrah turned into a HURRAH!

Not only did I win first place in my category, I also won the second overall prize — a year-long mentorship with Penny Reeve.

I was not expecting much from the very first novel that I completed, but it seems God had a different perspective. This was the encouragement I really needed, a reminder that I am actually capable of writing good stories. A reminder that the reason I endure all that critique is so that my stories become that much better and clearer. I almost forgot that was the whole point.

You can watch my reaction video here.