I'd choose this dialogue to revise your sentence:
<span>“Did you hear?” I asked them. “My painting got selected! Exciting, right?” I smiled. “Especially given that I felt so incompetent at the beginning and that the competition was ruthless!”
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It feels like the option that best uses the dialogue to improve this sentence, because the other options are either too informal or just the same sentence as the original one.
Yu Tsun killed Stephen Albert just to send a message to The Chief that the English weapons were stored in the town of Albert.
Emily Dickinson
William Cullen Bryant
