I didn’t win a 67 Pall Mall Global Communicator Award
This year for the first time in over a decade I entered a piece of writing in a writing competition. The competition was the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Awards. These awards are judged by an international (or ‘global’) committee, with the results announced progressively via a Long List, Short List, and then I think straight to the winners, though there may be a list of Finalists released somewhere in between. In any case, I didn’t win, and wasn’t short-listed, and didn’t make the Long List. So my ten-year wait to re-enter a writing competition ended with my entry going straight into the bin.
I haven’t entered a writing competition in over ten years because, simply, I haven’t deemed any of my work worthy. Or more to the point: winner-worthy. My novel We Were Not Men, published in 2021, was shortlisted for a couple of book prizes, but I didn’t personally enter the book into those prizes, so I’m not counting it in this brief note. (I didn’t enter it personally because I knew that it wasn’t good enough to win).
The reason that I haven’t entered into any writing competitions (I did, now that I think of it, enter a ‘film’ into the 2020 St Kilda Film Festival, and was lucky enough to win my category) is because I only enter when I have a piece of writing that might stand out. There was a time – admittedly twenty years ago – when I was a good judge of such worthiness, and won or was high-placed regularly enough for me to think that I knew what kind of story might resonate with judges. The three-year period when I was announced as the Winner, Runner-Up and Winner of the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year award was probably the peak of this thinking.
Clearly I’ve either lost this feel for competitions, or the world has moved on, or my work no longer resonates with judges in the way that it once did. The story that I entered into this award, and which was passed straight over, was the article that I wrote on the Bastard Hill Vineyard – a vineyard that has been under-appreciated or under-utilised for even longer than I’ve been out of writing competitions.
No hard feelings. The winners are all worthy and I’m over-joyed for them. I’m at peace with the fact that I didn’t win, and that I wasn’t a finalist, and that other writers or the work that they produced was simply too good this time around. I’ve been a journalist for over 30 years, I’ve had my fair share of wins and more than my fair share of luck. I’m grateful to my core.
But I’m writing this because I’ve just re-read my entry and for all of my excitement for the deserving success of others, I can’t help but admit that I feel crushed, dispirited and unseen. If this article wasn’t worthy of making it to the Long List of the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicators Awards then fuck me, I can no long claim to know anything about anything on the craft that I live in service to; indeed I can no longer claim to know anything about anything of the craft that I love.
—
Footnote: The article that was entered is written in ‘scenes’. It’s unusual for a 998-word article to be written in scenes; it’s a technique more commonly reserved for longer or essay pieces. This (very slight) unusualness might have counted against the article, I don’t know. I thought that it would and does count in its favour. The best short article that I’ve written in ten years – in my opinion – wasn’t good enough to make it to the long-list of the only major wine writing competition in the world. I’m not a networker or a strategist. I’m not cool. I live and die on the quality of my work, in words and in photographs, and on the quality of my work only. The reality that my best work isn’t worthy of a long-list is a shore onto which I hadn’t planned to be beached.
—
Disclaimer: Prizes and short-listings must be earned. Past performance is not an indication of future or present performance.
