Still on the subject of Hugos and other awards, I have a personal rule against campaigning for any award. I wont do it. It cheapens the award, it cheapens the work. And if I did win under such a circumstance, Id never know if it was because the work deserved it or because I campaigned for it. How did I come to this commitment? After I saw a major author literally begging an audience to vote for his book -- after I saw another author pushing SFWA members to nominate his novella. Both of these were authors I admired, and in retrospect the works they were campaigning for were worthy of award consideration. But -- I felt their behavior diminished them. I am not, and never will be, comfortable with aggressive campaigning. I do think its fair to ask people to read a work and consider it. I do think its fair to make a work available to the voters in whatever venue available. (Ive done that -- but only after the work had made a preliminary ballot. I can justify that as a courtesy to the voters.) But I will never want to be the kind of person who validates either his work or his personal worth by the number of sculptures on his shelf. Because that turns into a dick-measuring contest. Who has the most trophies? Who has no trophies? Who has the most nominations? Why does that mean anything? An award is an acknowledgment of excellence. No problem. Its a cross-section of how the electorate was thinking. But not winning an award doesnt mean your work wasnt excellent. I know when Ive done a good job, Ive finally gotten just good enough to tell the difference between shit and Shinola. I sit at my keyboard, I open a vein, I watch what pours out. Sometimes it startles me -- I didnt know I knew that. Sometimes it leaves me physically and emotionally exhausted. Sometimes I recognize that what I have written is going to disturb a lot of people because its coming from a place theyve never visited and probably wont want to. Sometimes I notice that certain kinds of character relationships keep popping up and I wonder what thats about -- I cant excuse it by saying, oh, thats what the story demands. No, thats where my mind went. I notice that theres a certain transformational triangle I like writing. Theres the young innocent, theres the competent man, theres the wise old pundit. (Yeah, the Heinlein model.) But its a great foundation for addressing the idea that human beings are constantly in a state of process. I am a process. My writing is a process. Its a report on the process of being human. Its a reflection of my self. I have -- at this stage in my life -- achieved a level of personal completeness and satisfaction. I know who I am, I know what I am committed to. I know what I want to say and do. This is a comfortable place to be -- at the same time, I tend to eschew comfort in my writing, because I think writing should always be risky. If someone hands me an award or an acknowledgment, on the few occasions it has happened, I find it embarrassing. (I expect to be very uncomfortable this August.) I find it embarrassing because I always feel Im taking something away from someone who may have deserved it more. And Im never sure why theyre handing me the trophy. Just what did I do? And I find it uncomfortable because ... I always find out later that my fly was open. So thats how I feel about it, and thats why I wont campaign.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 00:53:17 +0000
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