Well… I certainly did not see this coming.

So, okay, backstory: I took a general/intro creative writing class last spring semester through school… AKA a full year ago. And, you know, it wasn’t actually my favorite (shockingly, right?)… but, it is what it is/was.

And, anyway, the class covered, I think, three main areas of creative writing–poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. For me, writing fiction is a, uh, must… and poetry is secondary to me. But, creative non-fiction? Hard pass, sorry.

So, the creative non-fiction part of the class was a bit of a struggle for me. I mean, I don’t feel like I am a particularly interesting person, and besides that point, I don’t actually enjoy talking about myself, let alone even writing about myself, so I was just not interested in the whole non-fiction aspect, which was, at least for this class, completely focused on writing memoir-esque things. However… actually, yeah, I really didn’t like doing it. But, you know, I still did do it. Because I gotta keep my GPA afloat.

And then, at the end of this creative writing class journey, for our “final exam”, we each had to submit two pieces we had written during the semester to the school’s creative writing journal. Which, honestly, I did not even know was a thing and didn’t pay much attention to it even when I did submit my work to it (sort of by force). I did, though, check my e-mail often the few weeks after submitting because I was like, you know, you never know.

Oh, wait, pause, Cartoon quote coming to me…

Okay, now hit play.

Well, actually, I eventually forgot about the whole submission because I was like, figures, I’m never gonna hear back. But I didn’t really care that much to begin with, anyway, because, like I said, I seriously didn’t even know it was such a thing.

But then, guess what, almost a full Gregorian calendar year later… I get an automated e-mail from some service saying, “Congratulations! Your submission has been accepted.” And, naturally… I deleted it immediately.

Hey, it looked like spam. Total and utter virtual junk mail.

Luckily, though, another e-mail came in a week later that said something similar but different. And I just got annoyingly curious at this point, so I put my firewall up and clicked on it. And then… well, I dismissed it, again, because I was like… I seriously have never ever submitted anything to any “academic journal”.

AND THEN, another e-mail came in a few days later, this time more or less from a supposedly “real person” through whatever service/site was trying to contact me. It said something like “please make sure your profile and agree to terms for publishing” or whatever. And now I was beyond annoyed, so I gave up and actually clicked the link in what I assumed was a virus-infested piece of electronic mail. I would deal with whatever trojan horse ended up on my desktop later.

Turns out, I actually had an account through whatever this submitting service was/is, and I logged in on my second general password attempt. And, you know, if you get in under 4 password tries, it’s fate.

So, I’m sure everyone is bored out of each of their respective skulls by this point. Because this story is getting long and pointless at this point… But, then again, everyone’s probably bored enough on the daily these days that this story is probably the highlight of your day! Right?

Well, fast forward a bit, it really turns out that a piece I had submitted, again, a year ago… was actually just accepted a week ago to be published in the school’s yearly volume of the creative writing journal.

Well, this was unexpected.

And, what’s even more unexpected, the piece that was accepted was… my creative nonfiction one.

And then, when I re-read what I had, apparently, written a year ago… I seriously did not even recognize it as my own work. Well, that actually happens to me quite often, so that’s not the shocker here… but I was shocked that what I had written, a creative nonfiction piece, was actually… good.

So… TL;DR: I had a creative nonfiction piece I had written a year ago just accepted into my University’s creative writing journal. And the truly unexpected part was that I recognized my work as, not my own, but actually… really good.

…And also very personal, which is why I am hoping no one who knows me super personally will read the journal for themselves. And also why I’m not posting the journal name or piece itself here… at least, not yet. Let me accept the piece for myself before I share it with you all, okay? And then… we’ll see.

Okay, homedogs!

–Kari