[Max Goodman]

At the end of last year, I set the goal of being one of the top ten money winners in Spectator and Oldie comps during 2018. (I realize that for some of you here that is an unspeakably modest goal.) I've been looking forward to posting about it at the end of the year, but it's occurred to me that there's something cowardly about waiting, that I ought to share the goal before I know whether I'll meet it or not. Here's what I've learned so far:

* When a goal compares my performance to that of others, figuring out how I'm doing can require a lot of dreary bookkeeping. (Duh! This should have been obvious to me ahead of time.)

* The prose comps are better worth my time than I had thought. I've inked more often with prose than I expected to.

* Being immediately struck by a variety of ways to approach a comp isn't necessarily a good thing. Several of my favorite successful entries have been for comps that intially felt undoable.

* Money won is a particularly bad way for me to measure my comp success. The bonus fiver (which Lucy seems to be awarding less frequently) and the Chambers doorstop are nice bonus recognition, but being among a group of winners doesn't mean more to me when the prize is larger. (And the prize amount in the Speccie varies more than I had realized.) Counting wins or mentions would make more sense.

* I have an easier time meeting a weekly deadline than a monthly one. The Speccie deadline is regular enough that I've gotten into a pattern that helps me meet it. The Oldie's can sneak up on me and get missed.

So, how'm I doing so far (through Speccie 3049 and Oldie 228)? 6 wins (and 3 honorable menshes, which also please me--especially the one in which Lucy said my poem made her wince) for 145 pounds in winnings.

Am I on track to meet my goal? I don't know enough about other competitors' psuedonyms to be sure. If I credit all 2018 winnings to the names they're credited to in the Speccie and Oldie, and if I haven't made important errors in my spreadsheet, I'm number 9. (Yay!) But I know that our Brian competes also under a psuedonym, and when he's credited with those winnings, too, he knocks me down a spot. How many other pairs of names should have their winnings combined like that I don't know.

I'm having fun with this.