For years I lost at Monopoly on purpose; trying to win seemed desperate and unseemly. I've never played team sports, opting for dance and yoga and hiking and collaborative games. It took me nine years to get my BA because I kept dropping out, and my college transcript is a mess of As and Ws, nothing in between. In my career as a writer, my motto has been "circumvent," take the path less traveled; no MFA, no advanced degrees, few teachers. I hate contests: "What, you want me to pay you twenty bucks to read my manuscript and then somebody else wins and I get an honorable mention if I'm lucky? No, thanks."

I celebrated my non-competitive status with a sneer. (Picture me looking serious, dressed in black and clutching a red, red rose): "I see the world in nuance, refuse the simplistic win/lose dichotomy set out in our culture," I'd say. "I rebel against this culture's black and white attitude that if you're not a winner, you're a loser."

Years of this. Decades.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." ~ Shakespeare

Indeed.

The truth is that I hate to lose, and I've never won, so I usually don't play, and then I tell myself it doesn't matter to me.

But now, as the second week of the Red Room contest begins, I am still Number 1, and I like it here, and I plan to stay.

What's changed? Why does it matter now?

Being non-competitive has served me well, my strategy of circumvention kept me from being stomped when I was too tender to take it and allowed me to focus inward. But it does matter to me. Being Number 2, or Number 39, sucks when there's only room for Number 1. I mean, I like books and aprons, but I really want the fancy dinner. I want a gold medal. I want a book contract for my novel. I want that feeling of breaking the ribbon at the end of the marathon, of throwing my hands up in the air and hearing the applause. I want to be carried around on people's shoulders while the crowd goes wild.

It's more than want. I need. Unlike many of the almost 900 other contenders in the Red Room contest I need to win, not just because of the fabulous dinner, and celebrity authors and sexy night at the Saint Francis with my briefly-home-from-Madagascar husband, but because I need the attention right now. Not on a personal level, but professionally. In a publishing world of doom and gloom, I have a novel to sell, and it's a debut novel (my other books are nonfiction) and I need all the help I can get.

A Red Room victory will prove I can market myself.

A Red Room victory will show how much of a winner I am.

A Red Room victory will directly help my career.

So go wild, click all over me. Click here and here and here and here and here and everywhere else on my pages. Tell your friends. Let's have an Ericka party.

I want to win.