This was twenty years ago, so nothing was digital – hard copy was the only option – and this wasn’t the adult world of publishing, this was primary school, so everything was also handwritten. ![]() I wrote my piece, and even drew a small illustration of the story’s crime scene on the bottom of one of the pages. ![]() I knew I was a capable writer and that it was one of my strengths. There was almost nothing emotional or powerful about any of my writing, but the mechanics were pretty solid for a boy of my age. I had, at this point, been actively writing in my spare time for three years. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown books I was devouring from the primary school library at the time. It was an original mystery/detective story in the style of Donald J. An eleven-year-old Holden Sheppard submits a short story to a writing competition for the first time in his life. Or, more accurately, picture it: Geraldton, 2000. I’ll set the scene, Sophia Petrillo style. It was only tonight, here in 2020, when I was in the middle of judging a writing competition myself, that I reflected on this failure and realised it may not have been what I thought it was. ![]() One failure in particular has always hurt me, because it was the first. Like most writers, I have been sculpted by failure far more than success.
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