Honorable mention. Two words that could mean second place or not good enough for honor roll or even first place. It all depends on your perspective.

My mother had fistfuls of purple ribbons from the 4-H fair and several first-place finishes at the state fair. My mother was a top-notch competitor and winner.  My sister earned purple ribbons at the 4-H fair, but I never got past a blue ribbon. And don’t even get me started on the red ribbons. Seriously, we don’t discuss them.

Writer contests can make you feel amazing or make you feel like a fraud. Or make you feel like the ultimate failure. Rejection cuts deep sometimes.

A writer friend approached me with partnering on a prequel of my fantasy book. He wanted permission to do something different, and I happily obliged.

He wrote, I revised. I wrote, he revised. We went back and forth for a few months, polished the story until it shined like a new penny. And then we waited.

That’s the thing about writing. You write, you revise, you create, you hit your head on the table because you’re so frustrated by the process (did I mention it’s friggin’ hard?) and you wait.

If you’re really feeling adventurous, you hire a writing coach who pushes you even further, and you pay for it. I guess it’s a bit like a personal trainer. Except I don’t know any personal trainer whose feedback makes me pace so long there’s a path in my carpet.

It’s not about the process, but the results, right? Or is it… if you think about it, you work with a personal trainer, you develop better habits, you get stronger. You go through pain, ache, frustration and then hopefully a break through. It’s a fluke, you think. Then one breakthrough, and then another. Now it starts to feel real.

Writing can be a very lonely and different process. For one, it’s subjective. One person (your mom) may love it, and maybe some outside stranger, or maybe no one reads it all. Maybe you put your work out there, and you never get a like, a comment or any feedback. And if you do find people to read it, they may love or hate it or just say, it’s OK.

Creativity is so subjective because one person may love a certain book and another person hates it Pick any author and someone out there doesn’t like him; no matter how popular they might be.

So awards, honors are a big deal to an author because it is some validation. Like a win at a playoff game or selection in the big dance in March. We forget though that to get to this point, there must be some rejection along the way, some failures, some losses, some success on the validation journey.

The validation for my friend and my story came today. Honorable mention. Not too bad, you might say. It means that we got past the first round, but not enough to get finalized. As my friend wrote, I’ve got enough of these honorable mention certificates to wallpaper my wall.

I once read that early on in his career Stephen King attached all of his rejections on a random nail on his wall. Maybe following King’s example is a good idea; it obviously led to success.

The thing about King is he had about 70+ rejections before the one yes. One yes is all we need. Just one.

For me, honorable mention is something. It means we’re getting closer to breaking through. It means that it was good enough to rise above the others. It was good, not great, but it’s one step closer to that one yes.

Honorable mention does not mean a failure. It means we took a risk, we put our stories out there and someone thought it was OK enough to be recognized.

Maybe it’s not always about winning, maybe it’s about the journey.

Just don’t ask my mom. She’d say it’s about the purple ribbon.