FOR years I thought myself in competition with another writer—a writer, I should say, whom I’d never met. I first became acquainted with this writer nearly a decade ago when I joined a Facebook group for people applying to MFA programs in creative writing. Ostensibly the purpose of the group was to exchange information and resources and to support others who were navigating the application process. However, once application deadlines had passed and people began posting news of their acceptances—acceptances that went out long before rejections—the group did more to provoke my anxiety than anything else. Every day in the springtime of that year, I visited the group’s page religiously, compulsively, and it wasn’t long before I began to recognize the same name, the writer’s name, as he posted acceptance after acceptance from some of the country’s most prestigious writing programs—programs I had also applied to and would be rejected by in due time.
Eventually my own acceptance letter came, and though I had a relatively idyllic MFA experience, I found myself in the same situation two years later when I applied for postgraduate fellowships. This time I was rejected across the board and experienced a kind of professional déjà vu when one morning I opened an e-mail announcing the winners of a fellowship I had applied to. There, written plainly, was the writer’s name. The following year I applied to the same handful of fellowships, and again the same thing occurred: a series of rejections and one morning an e-mail announcing that the writer had been awarded another fellowship. In subsequent years the trend continued. I wrote and applied for fellowships, residencies, and scholarship programs to summer writers conferences, and very often when I received my rejection, I would scroll down and find the writer’s name among the list of awardees.
It wasn’t long before the writer announced that he had signed with an agent and sold his first book.of the same thought occurred to me: “That was meant to be mine.”
