{"id":5626,"date":"2015-01-25T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-25T07:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=5626"},"modified":"2015-01-25T07:00:08","modified_gmt":"2015-01-25T07:00:08","slug":"judging-the-judges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=5626","title":{"rendered":"Judging the best"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"colin<\/a>
Colin Firth in a tux – just one of the reasons we like awards season.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s awards season\u2026<\/p>\n

We all know what that means \u2013 Hollywood on show.<\/p>\n

Gorgeous men in tailored suits, beautiful woman in fab frocks and far too much time spent on the internet looking at both.<\/p>\n

But Hollywood doesn\u2019t have a monopoly on awards \u2013 there are book awards too.<\/p>\n

I write romance and women\u2019s fiction \u2013 so I\u2019m unlikely ever to be involved in the Booker or the Nobel Prize for Literature.<\/p>\n

In my world of popular fiction \u2013 there are three big awards.<\/p>\n

The Romantic Novel of the Year (RoNA) awards \u2013 the UK\u2019s major romance award given by the Romantic Novelists\u2019 Association.<\/p>\n

The RITA Award given by the Romance Writers of America.<\/p>\n

And the Australian Romance Writer\u2019s Romantic Book of the Year Awards (Ruby).<\/p>\n

And while we mean it when we say \u2018it\u2019s an honour just to be nominated\u2019 \u2013 we all dream of winning one of these awards.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The world’s top awards for romantic fiction<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Australian and UK awards are judged by readers \u2013 the US award is different. The first round judges are authors. Obviously you can\u2019t judge in the category in which you are entered \u2013 so I find myself at the moment reading books that would not be my normal choice. Not just reading them but judging them.<\/p>\n

So how to you judge a book in a sub-genre you don\u2019t normally read (or like)?<\/p>\n

I pondered this for a bit and thought about how I want my book to be judged.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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\u2019 heads? Sentences and words can be ugly \u2013 or they can be beautiful. That beauty is the mark of good writing.<\/p>\n

So as I work my way through these books I have to judge, those are the criteria I am using because that\u2019s how I want to be judged.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, I know these books I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

(And of course, I\u2019m doing all this with fingers firmly crossed in the hope that one of my books will appear on one of those esteemed short lists\u2026. If not this year, maybe in the future).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s awards season\u2026 We all know what that means \u2013 Hollywood on show. Gorgeous men in tailored suits, beautiful woman in fab frocks and far too much time spent on the internet…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-1sK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}