Here's to Happy Women...

We've all heard of a win-win situation, but w hat about a lose-win situation? Sounds confusing, but it’s not. Sometimes when we lose we still win. Take for example a recent event in my life. Some of my readers nominated me for both “Best Writing” and “Most Thought Provoking” in an online competition for women bloggers. I told everyone who would listen—and a few who wouldn’t—that I wanted either one of these awards for the first line of my book proposal. I explained over and over again that it would be a call out to influential people, especially editors. It would make them stand up and take notice and provide validation that I was doing something right—that there’s an audience out there for my sideways voice. How pompous, silly and narcissistic I must have sounded...and stupid. I failed to realize that receiving the nominations and then making it into the semi-finals meant that I was being noticed already—and that my readers were plenty influential in their own right. More im...