Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

It is every writer’s disappointment: to enter a contest or send a manuscript to a publisher with high hopes, only to have them crushed by rejection.

I have played this game long enough – at least fifteen years – to know the chances of having one’s work accepted are close to slim and none. Yet, like any addict, I return again and again to that which hurts me.

Yesterday’s particular pain came from the posting of the Power of Purpose awards on the web site by the same name. I was not among the winners.

Back in spring, I’d been struck with the goals of the competition: to explore how the power of purpose directs one’s life and, possibly, changes the world. So I’d submitted an essay for the contest that, by the way, had a $100,000 first prize. No that isn’t a typo. One hundred thousand dollars is the largest sum I’ve ever seen given as a literary prize. I had to enter.

Since this was the first annual contest of its kind, there were no previous entries to study. There were no former winners to pour over, in the hope they provided some clue to the organizers’ personal bias on the topic.

I submitted my story about Earl, who at age 63 achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a rookie policeman in the City of Chicago. If that didn’t take a power of purpose to achieve, I don’t know what did. Truthfully, I knew from the start that his accomplishment might not qualify as a world-changing event, but I reasoned his example could motivate others his age to do likewise. Going forward, wouldn’t that be world-changing?

The Power of Purpose organizers saw differently. The winning essays were posted yesterday; and, while I haven’t read them all, what I’ve read so far indicates they were looking for lofty, life-altering, philosophical answers to the question of the power of purpose.

I can’t fault them their preference; it is their contest, after all. I just need to recover from the disappointment and keep sending those manuscripts out.