Behind the Story: Caitlyn Clambake vs the Kilowatt Klepto

Well well well, welcome back to another behind the story! For this one I'm diving into one of my all time favourites (and likely one of my most unhinged ones!). Like all my stories so far Caitlyn Clambake took me on a journey of highs and lows, but hey, if you're not bleeding for something then what the heck are you even doing?

This story first came to be when I entered the Winter Heart 2025 battle for the website Writing Battle. If you read my last "behind the story" you know what it's about, a peer judged contest where after you enter your story you get to judge other people's work. However... for this contest they changed up the rules. The peer judging was out, and now it was ALL professionally judged.

I was thrilled. After my less than fabulous score in the peer judging with my cemetery tale I was ready to be judged by people who really knew what they were talking about. You know, professionals who know how to spot talent when they see it (this was foolish thinking, trust me I know).

Anyways, there were four potential genres to pull: Romance, Rom-Com, Comedy, and Drama. I ended up pulling Rom-Com and couldn't have been happier! I've always thought comedy was one of my strong suits and I was excited to put it to the test with this challenge. On top of that genre I also pulled two additional prompt cards: Battery and Lawyer.

The prompts I received along with a 1000 word limit

Now I'd like to say it took me a while to come up with the idea for my story, but the honest truth is Caitlyn just sort of burst out of my head. As soon as I saw the prompts, the image of a delusional articling student who thought they were the top dog immediately took over. I thought it was hilarious and her voice came so naturally to me the words practically wrote themselves. Looking back, I wonder if it was so easy to capture her voice because I share a lot of her delusional tendencies... who knows! Moving on!

Of course, with all the easy writing there were some challenges too. My genre was Rom-Com after all so I had to have some romance in there. However by the time I was ready to get to it I had already written so much silly backstory for Caitlyn that there were only so many words left to complete the story. Unfortunately this is a common occurrence for me and if you ever get to the bottom of one of my stories and think to yourself "huh that happened a bit quick" it's because it did! My bad! But still, through this addition of romance another one of my favourite characters was born, the Kilowatt Klepto. Funnily enough, his original name was the D-Cell Sneak, but over the course of some edits he got a much punchier name. And by punchy I mean it now contained alliteration which I'm a HUGE sucker for.

Speaking of names, you may be asking how I chose Caitlyn Clambake. Well, Caitlyn just seemed fitting for your every-day white girl with misplaced confidence (sorry to any Caitlyn's who may be reading this). Clambake on the other hand is an homage to the criminally underrated movie B**** Slap (2009). I've linked the trailer below, and before you say anything, yes I did indeed watch this when I was sixteen years old, no I wasn't masking anything, and yes powerful woman owning their sexuality and beating up men is very gay!! But I digress, the name Clambake came from a quote in the movie (and at the end of the trailer) where one of the characters says "Ram this in your clambake b**** cake" and then shoots a rocket. Iconic.

This is not suitable for work FYI

Anyways, upon completing the story I felt pretty damn good about myself (as I always do, god I really am delusional), but when I gave it to my trusty beta readers I got incredibly mixed feedback. Some of them loved it with no notes while others didn't understand and offered up changes that diverged from the heart of the story.

To be honest, I was at a loss. I didn't know how to approach a situation where people were either one way or another about it. And unfortunately for me, the critical feedback felt like it was speaking louder than the positive. Suddenly I began lamenting my choices and chastising myself for not taking the competition seriously enough. I mean, who did I think I was writing a story like this? This was a professionally judged contest, I should have been writing something serious...

I expressed this to my partner Michael, who of course supported me with lots of pep talks (a running theme you will notice). After a while I ended up coming to the conclusion that writing is supposed to be fun anyways, and as long as I was having fun and was happy with my work that was all that mattered. So I hit submit on the story.

Another different thing about this particular contest that I forgot to mention is that you can get eliminated early if your story loses three battles. And unlike last time, instead of releasing your point totals at the end, they painfully reveal whether or not you won your head-to-head battles right after they're completed.

So, still licking the wounds of my beta reader feedback it wasn't long before I received my first email telling me that I had lost my first battle. It was like being stabbed in my already bleeding heart. Worst of all, I tortured myself further by going to the website where I could see all the other stories that had won. In front of their names was a shiny "1" while next to mine was a big fat "0".

Soon after, the next email came through. And I lost again.

I was one away from being out of the contest without ever having a chance. At this point every cruel thing I had thought about myself and my story came back, only this time it weirdly hurt a little less. Why? Well these were professionals. They knew what they were talking about so this wasn't just me beating myself up anymore, these were facts. My writing just wasn't good enough...

By this point I had written it off. In fact I was sort of looking forward to it being over so I didn't have to think about it anymore. But then lo and behold the third email comes through, and instead of telling me I was out of the competition it tells me that I had won my third battle and was moving on to the next round.

Let me tell you I was GOBSMACKED. I was so confident that there was no way anyone was going to like it. But then... someone did. And yes, some of my beta readers liked it too, but I find it hard to believe anyone I know actually likes my stuff. It's easier to convince myself that they're just being nice for my sake. And yes, I need to work on that.

But still!! I won one battle! Going back to the webpage my name now had a "1" next to it while below me, a long list of those who didn't make it to the next round were grayed out. It could have been me. It almost should have been me, but it wasn't. And for that, I felt validated.

The competition continued, and despite always being on the cusp of elimination Caitlyn seemed to get a second wind. I won my next two battles, likely because the judges were getting tired of traditional rom-coms and started to see the shine in Caitlyn.

But in the end, after six rounds of hanging on for dear life, I was eliminated. However to me it felt like a victory. Not only that, it felt like a lesson. There was good in my story. The fact is there always had been, but I'd let myself forget that. It shouldn't have taken outside validation for me to know that my writing had worth and I hope to never need it again (let's face it, this will be a long journey). But hey, maybe you'll see Caitlyn again in another story of mine. And who knows, I might even be delusional enough to make it a full length novel.

That's all I have to say about it for now. Thanks as always for sticking around to hear my ramblings.

Until next time,

M.