The Crossroads I Thought:

Was behind me.

I didn’t post last week. I took a break from social media because, frankly, it’s exhausting. I wanted to focus on writing. As life would have it, other things got in the way.

A company I have worked with for nearly twenty years recently adopted what I can only describe as a predatory corporate model. I won’t dress it up; they made me feel unwanted and most definitely unappreciated. That kind of thing does something to you, especially when you’ve given nearly two decades of yourself. You sit with it. You turn it over. You wonder if it’s the kick in the pants you’ve needed to start treating your writing career like a career and not a hobby. Maybe. I’m still deciding.

And then, as if the universe had a quota to fill, I found out I was not shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

I want to be clear: congratulations to the five authors from Trinidad and the one from Guyana who made it. I genuinely mean that. I hope one of them wins it all.

But I have to be honest. I thought I had this one.

The Commonwealth is the only competition I enter. Not because I’m above others, but because to win it would be the pinnacle of validation for where I want to stand as a writer. I studied past winners. I studied shortlisted authors going back years. I looked for the patterns, the emotional registers, the kinds of stories they kept returning to. And then I wrote something I believed hit every single one of those notes.

The story is about Amy Jacques Garvey. The woman in the room when Marcus Garvey’s movement nearly died, and the reason it didn’t. One night. Detroit, 1925. Everything on the line. I’ll leave it there.

I felt that story in my chest. I still do.

Guess it wasn’t enough.

So here I am, standing at a crossroads I genuinely thought I had already crossed. A corporate betrayal on one side. A creative rejection on the other. And somewhere in the middle, I'm asking the universe what exactly it’s trying to tell me.

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I don’t have an answer yet. But I’m still here. Still writing. Still asking.

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📚 Redemption Songs 📚 Friendship Estate 📚 I Am Cuba

You can find the links at www.lyndaredwards.com.