A few friends of mine returned from the writing-prize awards
ceremony (brand name is irrelevant) "sans bling", as one put it. And
the most pragmatic thing I can say is this:
It's better to have deserved to win and not won, than to
have won and not deserved it.
I am not the first to make that observation. I've been a
judge in three national writing competitions, and my work has won a couple of
awards. Notice I don't say I won a couple of awards; I say my work won. This is
an important distinction: You are not being judged, your work is. "But my
work is me!" No, it's not. This is essential to remember not only when
dealing with awards, but when reading reviews. My God, I've had professional
reviewers make completely opposite judgments about my work, and if I took it
seriously EITHER WAY, I'd be impossible to live with.
Needless to say, if your work didn't win, you're lucky if
you feel that a work genuinely superior to yours won. But when it comes to
writing championships,
well, they're like figure-skating competitions. A panel
(usually) of judges decides who gets the bling, because the whole business is
subjective. There's no finish line to cross first or ticket sales from opening
weekend to measure, though at least in figure skating it's obvious whether you landed that triple or fell on your ass. For writing, it's worse. While any judge can tell whether you can write
complete, coherent sentences, one judge might love your style, while another totally
doesn't get it. Worse still, a judge might have something against you
personally and not have the integrity to recuse himself or herself. Judges
disagree, judges quarrel, judges have their pet vanities, judges have
sentimental ideas about who SHOULD be the winner this time, judges vote, and
the majority rules.
If your work has won, it gives you the freedom and
credibility to say, "It's all crap!" if you really think so.
I might add that I recently dug out of storage one of my
awards, in the form of a chunk of acrylic with a medallion embedded in it. I
slipped it from its protective velveteen sleeve and found that the acrylic had
gone all cloudy and yucky-looking. No one's fault, just a reminder that awards
come and go, and it's only the work that endures.
[photo of ES's desk cup by ES]
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"...if I took it seriously EITHER WAY, I'd be impossible to live with." Sigh, this just happened to me last night. I decided that after looking over an instructor's extensive comments on an assignment, I must have absolutely no talent and, yes, I was impossible to live with.
ReplyDeleteEvery week you manage to say something that speaks directly to a problem I can relate to and it's time I let you know. Thank you, Elizabeth.
Hey, thanks, Linda. Your comment means a lot to me. Hang in there and keep us posted on your work, OK?
Deletethis post puts things in prospective for me. i've been going around submitting to poetry competitions and chapbook contests, with an ever growing list of declined in my submittable. was beginning to think that I myself was missing something or wasn't good enough. especially after being informed from editors that they enjoyed it/made it to the final selection but not considered a fit. seeing another "almost" started to become just as daunting as getting the "declined" that i vowed to stop with the current trend and get an "accepted." like a do or die. anyways, on the bright side participants often received a free copy of the winning chapbook or poetry issue
ReplyDeleteNot that this is a great thing, but it took me years upon years to get published and get representation. Wish I'd taken a photo of the stack of rejection letters I'd accumulated before throwing them out. The thing is, Lidy, a true writer cannot BUT persist. I think you understand.
Deleteyeah, I do and like Hunter S. Thompson said, "As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says 'you are nothing', I will be a writer.”
ReplyDeleteMy gosh, I was a fan of HT forever but never came across that quote, that I remember anyway. Thanks for sharing it.
DeleteYou're welcome. I actuallly came across the quote in a Book Country forum. I liked it so much that I decided to use it as the quote of the month for June on my blog.
Delete