The Stare Down

What is it about the competition where four-figure payoffs are at stake the I feel the need to size up the opponents? Okay, what is it about competition period that makes me need to size them up?

As some of you may know, I'd signed up, in my writing rehab program (not to be confused with an actual, structured program of any sort of which I am painfully, sadly remiss), for a Short-fiction contest. One week, one story, they give you the genre and the subject. And you compete, in the first round, with about 20 other people. Naturally, the names are published, naturally, it's there for the world to see.

So yesterday, I end up hacking out about 800 words for this (max: 2,500), comedy, dog walker. Today, I push it to the end. Final is probably about 1,900 before revision, which could easily add another. What do I do to get it going this morning? If you said "Drink coffee," you get a gold star. If you said "Pace around the apartment semi-nude," you get a gold star. If you said "Masturbate until your [phallus] is raw," you can keep your gold star (I don't want to know where it's been). But I also decide to see who the competition is.

I'm flashing back now: times at whiskeys, smokey, barroom pool table, we each hate each other idyllically. To get ready for a game, I would stare at the opponent, samurai-style, eyes slits and stick piked in front, waiting to be impressed. At least, the games I almost won.

I have to say, I'm kind of a competitive jerk.

* * *

Apart from Monday's writing not being nearly so tangent-inducing, it also started with a different scenario. If you said "Reading John Gardner," you get a gold star (if you're one of the masturbation people, you can keep your own star again).

But, and this is now completely an aside, meaning it will be brief, before the blog gets taken over: I finish the story. What is it about it, that, even in its first-draft form, I feel the need to foist it on others like a cat with a dead bird?

Maybe this is part of the rehab.