I've been riding a pretty high wave. A big writing contest win. Celebrating thirty years of marriage. A new kitchen floor.

So I was a bit surprised when I opened my scores from a recent contest entry and found some of the harshest criticism I've received in years. Some of the comments were appropriate. I scanned all the scores before going back to read them more in depth.
All the judges commented about the plethora of typos and verb tense disagreement and title inconsistencies.

There must have a mistake. That explained a lot. I'm known for turning in clean copy. I have very few typos in my work. There'd been a mix up. Whew.

So I pulled the submissions out and proceeded to burn with mortification.

Typos, typos, everywhere I looked.

Nothing to do but cry: Mea culpa, mea culpa.

I entered the contest in a big hurry to get my stories done and in the mail before the deadline.

Too much of a hurry.

I emailed the contest coordinator to apologize for the miserable offerings I sent. I wish I could email the judges and plead with them to forget my name. And I really want to take some stickers and paste them into the book compiled of all the entries. They would say, "Carrie really does know how to use spellcheck. She's deeply sorry for all the errors. Please forgive her."

Lesson learned. I hope. Next contest deadline will say for sure.