Last March I submitted three poems to a contest. A couple of months later one of those poems was accepted by an online journal, so I sent a notice that I was withdrawing it from the contest.

I have checked the first journal’s website a couple of times this month, & finally today I see that a winner & two runners-up have been announced. The poems themselves are posted too, & honestly I think my submissions were more interesting than the winner. I like one of the runner-up poems more than that one too. You’d think that would discourage me, but quite the opposite—I’m feeling good about the quality of my poems, & tonight I plan to send them off to another journal I’ve had my eye on for a while!