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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