"Compusion" Nominated for Wordsmith Award!

I just got a PM on FFN:

Just a message to let you know that your story Compulsion) has been nominated in The Wordsmith Awards for Best Angst. You can check the awards out by going to wordsmithawards(dot)blogspot(dot)com

I nearly fell out of my chair. I'm amazed.

Okay, maybe "stunned" is a better word.

Compulsion was the first fanfiction story I wrote. It's the tale of an OCD Bella falling in love with a shy, clumsy and suicidal Emmett. Edward wants her, too, and their love triangle (and Edward's way of coping with Bella's preference for Emmett) is the catalyst for a rebellion against the Queen of the Vampires, Victoria. There's a sequel, which I still haven't finished (I promise, I will, though!) of Edward finding love with Alice after he turns to her for help in healing his broken heart.

I still love that little story and it's always going to have a special place in my heart. It's a bit rough around the edges. My word processor disliked the FFN site and so some sentences are cut off in the middle. Rereading it now, I can see how much I've grown as a writer in just six short months.

When I finished writing it, it had 45 reviews, which I felt was a very respectable showing for a first story. While writing its sequel I decided thatI'd go ahead and begin work on the next story I intended to post, Written in the Stars. And, well, the rest is history.

It's never going to get much attention because of the Emmett/Bella angle, a pairing which seems vaguely incestuous to many Twilight fans. It sits in a dusty corner of my profile page, mostly ignored in favor of my other tales. But I'm not going to go back and edit it or fix any of the mistakes I made. I'm going to let it stand as a reminder to me of how far I've come and how much more room I have to grow.

I'm very grateful to whomever nominated it for the Wordsmith Awards.