Previous Competitions

The Quarterly Contest

Winter 2025 (Epiphany)

Prompt: Have you ever had everything change in one moment of realization? Where you knew everything that followed would never be the same? These moments of epiphany become defining points in our lives. Mad Woman Publishing invites you to write a short story or poem about these transformations, where a moment of clarity and understanding causes one or more characters to embrace the madness, for better or for worse.

Winner: Kaileen Langstone

The Day I Forgot to Burn Out Properly

I woke up on a Tuesday,

or… maybe a Thursday?

Time had ticked away to get a coffee without me.

My coffee tasted like “why bother” with salt instead of sugar.

My to-do list sighed when I looked at it.

Even my plants, those leafy optimists,

drooped with indeference.

Haven’t I done everything right?

Lists,

Color-coded calendars,

journaling,

hydration text reminders…

Still, my body refused to reboot.

It just spun the buffering wheel of doom behind my eyes.

So I lay there,

a watery pancake of a person,

wondering if this is what enlightenment felt like.

Deflated, tired, no syrup… and strangely peaceful.

Then, somewhere between my second nap

and my fourth apology to the laundry pile

for not washing them,

a small thought-tab popped up in my brain-browser.

What if I just… don’t?

Don’t confuse exhaustion for purpose.

Don’t chase the deadlines like a caffeinated ghost.

Don’t twist myself into a balloon animal

to impress people who never bought a ticket.

And what happened?

The world, miraculously, didn’t end.

No alarms blared for me to snooze.

The Productivity Police didn’t kick my door down.

The sky stayed blue.

My inbox wept quietly in the corner,

and I… laughed.

A laugh that started in my toes

and uncurled like a long-stiff spring.

Because all this time

I’d been carrying the threat of doomsday apocalypse in my purse and it turned out to be just

old crumpled receipts, melted chapstick, and a ginger chew.

So I made tea.

I let my emails compost naturally.

I danced, terribly, to a playlist I entitled Existential But Make It Disco.

And suddenly,

I wasn’t behind anymore.

I wasn’t broken.

I was breathing.

I was gloriously, imperfectly-present.

Now, when people ask

how did you overcome burnout,

I tell them the truth:

I didn’t.

I invited it in,

offered it snacks, the tv remote along with the Netflix password

and waited until it got bored & wandered off to haunt someone more ambitious.

And in its absence,

I found something wildly sacred:

The art of doing absolutely nothing

on purpose and calling it self care.