It’s awards season…
We all know what that means – Hollywood on show.
Gorgeous men in tailored suits, beautiful woman in fab frocks and far too much time spent on the internet looking at both.
But Hollywood doesn’t have a monopoly on awards – there are book awards too.
I write romance and women’s fiction – so I’m unlikely ever to be involved in the Booker or the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In my world of popular fiction – there are three big awards.
The Romantic Novel of the Year (RoNA) awards – the UK’s major romance award given by the Romantic Novelists’ Association.
The RITA Award given by the Romance Writers of America.
And the Australian Romance Writer’s Romantic Book of the Year Awards (Ruby).
And while we mean it when we say ‘it’s an honour just to be nominated’ – we all dream of winning one of these awards.
The Australian and UK awards are judged by readers – the US award is different. The first round judges are authors. Obviously you can’t judge in the category in which you are entered – so I find myself at the moment reading books that would not be my normal choice. Not just reading them but judging them.
So how to you judge a book in a sub-genre you don’t normally read (or like)?
I pondered this for a bit and thought about how I want my book to be judged.
I want to be judged on the quality of my story telling. Are the characters compelling? Is the plot believable? Am I emotionally engaged with the story?
I also want to be judged on the quality of my writing. Not just if it is grammatically correct and well punctuated (although that does matter), but do I use words well. Is there a rhythm and musicality to my writing? Do my words paint pictures in my readers’ heads? Sentences and words can be ugly – or they can be beautiful. That beauty is the mark of good writing.
So as I work my way through these books I have to judge, those are the criteria I am using because that’s how I want to be judged.
Most importantly, I know these books I’m reading are very precious to their authors. Those authors have worked hard to produce them, and have their hopes and dreams caught up in those pages.
I will treat them with all due care and respect. And who knows, I may come away from this exercise with a new list of books and authors I want to read.
(And of course, I’m doing all this with fingers firmly crossed in the hope that one of my books will appear on one of those esteemed short lists…. If not this year, maybe in the future).