I'd like to thank the Academy.... [thinking too much]
No, really, I would. I have dreams of acceptance speeches for the Oscar for Best Screenplay, or Best Adapted Screenplay, or an Emmy for Best Scriptwriting, or a Booker Prize. Or a Nebula or Hugo. I think everyone who's written anything occasionally indulges in these ideas. Even if you haven't written anything original yet, you want the damn Emmy as bad as Susan Lucci did for a while.
What brought this on? A few things. I won my first (second, actually, but I'll get to that in a minute) large-ish fanfic award a week ago, in the BtVS/AtS Walks With Heroes Awards. I'm glad I won. The story deserved it, I think. Currently I'm nominated in two other fanfic award... things: the Alias Festival of Fiction, and the Stargate Fiction Awards. That also made me think about this a good bit. Plus, I've been hearing discontented, weird rumblings from friends about some authors campaigning for fanfic awards, or whining about the way awards for fanfiction are decided upon. And lastly, we have the joy that is fanfic_hate, a new lj community that is dedicated to "overrated" fanfic discussion, with the caveat that "no author bashing is allowed." They've been singularly unsuccessful but undeniably popular in that regard.
All of this, now that I have my own personal "You're a Winner!" banner for one story, made me think a lot. People snarl about awards, and claim that they're nothing but popularity contests; they insist that only the best-known stories win, that the judging is rigged, that the voting is unfair, that the littler, less-known authors fall by the wayside in all fandoms, because no one *cares* about them....
Guess what? That happens in the big leagues too.
Who do you think votes for the Academy Awards? The Academy. Not a grad-school board of scholarly examination. Not Congress. Not a panel of Dalai Lamas. The Academy, composed of those in the Hollywood biz who've been given a ballot and told to go watch more movies than they probably have time for or have ever wanted to. And the fandom equivalent votes on most fanfic awards.
In the old, old days-- which I caught the very tail end of, by dint of getting published in a print 'zine maybe one or two years before the first websites with fanfiction went up on the Web-- fandom had the Fan Q Awards. The annual MediaWest convention gave these out for best published fanfiction of the year, in various categories, for each fandom where a 'zine was published. A lot of people won them. Many deserved to. Some may have not. Either way, didn't matter: they were the only game in town. A Fan Q *meant* something. People knew your name. People bought your 'zine. They trusted that any other 'zine you put out would at least be readable. You got a shiny certificate and a pat on the back from *all* of fandom that knew about fanfic.
I think part of my own, particularly dweeb-like Susan Lucci attitude toward awards (gimme!) is a hangover from this. I'm currently reassessing this stance, though. Which is not to say that I think fanfiction awards are worthless. I think they promote little-known fics; I know they've brought stories to my attention that I'd otherwise miss. I like getting more feedback from stories I wrote a while ago, when new people read them for the first time. And hey, I'm all about the shiny buttons and banners. Sign me up.
But I think I-- and several other people in various fandoms-- have to take a step back, now. Because while fanfic awards are nice and great and do show that other writers and readers like your writing, they aren't anything to get bent out of shape over, or campaign for. They're certainly not something worth spewing venom about in an lj community. And while disappointment every time I lose is probably inevitable, I hope I've managed to evolve into the 'it's an honor just to be nominated' mindset by this point.
Part of this is due to the sheer proliferation of fanfic awards. In Buffy fandom alone, you can probably find a new award competition going on every other week. I've seen people whose stories are literally sagging under the weight of all their awards from rinky-dink fanfic sites (Award for Best Mile High Sex! With a Banana! Giles/Spike Category!), while the story itself might be mildly enjoyable but hardly worth the 15 little medals attached to it. As fandoms have moved out into the web, each show's fan base now hosts awards; and most have more than one. Some of these competitions are strenuously, maybe even rigidly overseen and voted upon, with multiple rounds of voting and a panel of judges. Most are not. It's pretty easy to figure out which are which, and thus which competitions deserve the name, and which are puff-fluff ribbons from author's friends. The three I mentioned above are not ones which I consider "fluff". There's fairly clear-cut standards, and the voting is being checked carefully. Others may think that they still don't go far enough, that there needs to be judges. But there's a reason that doesn't happen often.
The most rigidly enforced competitions, the ones with actual judges, or screened voting, or weighted voting, are the most likely not to be held again. Because people, it is a lot of *work* to count those votes. It is a lot of effort to make sure the categories are organized correctly, and to listen to the bitching and moaning of nominees, fans, and disgruntled authors who didn't get nominated. Fandom does not have a Price-Waterhouse equivalent. Would that an audit of well-paid and endlessly patient accountants wanted the job, but they don't. It is even more effort to find unbiased, willing, dependable people with time on their hands to read every submitted story and then grade it according to a scale. Bitching at the organizers is the least fair thing that can be done; these people have an incredibly thankless job. The Halo Awards went under just because it *was* too hard to keep up the effort needed to get this kind of judging done. The Treasury (Smallville fanfic) awards were held up due to unavoidable delays, mostly due to efforts to try and make the voting *more fair*, and the organizers were subjected to extremely mean-spirited criticism for it.
By the way, that's where I got my first fanfic award. Treasury Award for Best Crossover. And does anyone know that? No. Why? Because when the organizers *did* get stuff up, people had already forgotten about it. They didn't even get a thank-you for trying. All that effort to run a fair competition, and it sinks into obscurity, because internet life moves too fast to pay attention to last month's awards.
What does this tell us about how long people are going to remember that you won that shiny award?
If I wanted, I could have a page full of all my nomination buttons, which outnumber my awards by about 10 to 1. Some of my stories nominated in the Stargate Fanfic Awards are four years old, and have been nominated every single year since I put them on the web. They haven't won any awards yet. I don't expect them to. I am now... mostly okay with that. (I haven't achieved sainthood yet, though.) But I admit to cheerfully looking forward to certain authors kicking my butt in the Alias FOF awards, and different ones doing the same thing in Stargate. That's okay. Some of those authors truly deserve it, and if they win, I'll shrug and know that there's always next year. Some of them are just better known, more popular, and more prolific. The odds are just in their favor. C'est la vie. There are comments I've gotten, recommendations of my work that people have made, that have filled me with *much* more glee than any award banner, because I know these people, and their standards are much higher than any competition could ever be. This has helped my attitude more than anything, I think. Winning an award is nice. Winning respect from those you respect is better.
But for those times when the gods laugh at us and some talentless nitwit stuffs the ballot box-- or at least, when that seems more believable than reality-- I recommend reading your best feedback from your readers. Talking to friends who've beta'd your work, figure out if you *can* improve. Reading any recommendation of any story you've written on a recs website. Writing another story, to have something to submit for next year's competitions.
Not whining, and bitching, and insulting the winners and the awards panel anonymously in public forums. NOT claiming you were robbed. Not figuring out how to skew the curve next time. This is the behavior of 10-year-olds deprived of gold stars and cookies at a spelling bee, not aspiring writers. We might be writing fanfic, but honestly, most of us are adults. If a writer can't act graciously, said writer doesn't deserve the sparkly award button.
You can always make yourself a banner that says "winner!" if you really need an award that badly. Otherwise? Try to keep it in perspective. The stories that change fandom-- or change the fans' perception of their show, or are read by *every single person* who likes that kind of fanfic-- don't need awards. They don't need prizes. They sink in and become fanon, or they become a rallying point for writers who've read it. I could name the authors who have won awards they richly deserved, but that won't tell you as much as saying the names of their stories. Because those stories get remembered, sometimes so well that people think they saw them on-screen. Which is a better award than any button.
What brought this on? A few things. I won my first (second, actually, but I'll get to that in a minute) large-ish fanfic award a week ago, in the BtVS/AtS Walks With Heroes Awards. I'm glad I won. The story deserved it, I think. Currently I'm nominated in two other fanfic award... things: the Alias Festival of Fiction, and the Stargate Fiction Awards. That also made me think about this a good bit. Plus, I've been hearing discontented, weird rumblings from friends about some authors campaigning for fanfic awards, or whining about the way awards for fanfiction are decided upon. And lastly, we have the joy that is fanfic_hate, a new lj community that is dedicated to "overrated" fanfic discussion, with the caveat that "no author bashing is allowed." They've been singularly unsuccessful but undeniably popular in that regard.
All of this, now that I have my own personal "You're a Winner!" banner for one story, made me think a lot. People snarl about awards, and claim that they're nothing but popularity contests; they insist that only the best-known stories win, that the judging is rigged, that the voting is unfair, that the littler, less-known authors fall by the wayside in all fandoms, because no one *cares* about them....
Guess what? That happens in the big leagues too.
Who do you think votes for the Academy Awards? The Academy. Not a grad-school board of scholarly examination. Not Congress. Not a panel of Dalai Lamas. The Academy, composed of those in the Hollywood biz who've been given a ballot and told to go watch more movies than they probably have time for or have ever wanted to. And the fandom equivalent votes on most fanfic awards.
In the old, old days-- which I caught the very tail end of, by dint of getting published in a print 'zine maybe one or two years before the first websites with fanfiction went up on the Web-- fandom had the Fan Q Awards. The annual MediaWest convention gave these out for best published fanfiction of the year, in various categories, for each fandom where a 'zine was published. A lot of people won them. Many deserved to. Some may have not. Either way, didn't matter: they were the only game in town. A Fan Q *meant* something. People knew your name. People bought your 'zine. They trusted that any other 'zine you put out would at least be readable. You got a shiny certificate and a pat on the back from *all* of fandom that knew about fanfic.
I think part of my own, particularly dweeb-like Susan Lucci attitude toward awards (gimme!) is a hangover from this. I'm currently reassessing this stance, though. Which is not to say that I think fanfiction awards are worthless. I think they promote little-known fics; I know they've brought stories to my attention that I'd otherwise miss. I like getting more feedback from stories I wrote a while ago, when new people read them for the first time. And hey, I'm all about the shiny buttons and banners. Sign me up.
But I think I-- and several other people in various fandoms-- have to take a step back, now. Because while fanfic awards are nice and great and do show that other writers and readers like your writing, they aren't anything to get bent out of shape over, or campaign for. They're certainly not something worth spewing venom about in an lj community. And while disappointment every time I lose is probably inevitable, I hope I've managed to evolve into the 'it's an honor just to be nominated' mindset by this point.
Part of this is due to the sheer proliferation of fanfic awards. In Buffy fandom alone, you can probably find a new award competition going on every other week. I've seen people whose stories are literally sagging under the weight of all their awards from rinky-dink fanfic sites (Award for Best Mile High Sex! With a Banana! Giles/Spike Category!), while the story itself might be mildly enjoyable but hardly worth the 15 little medals attached to it. As fandoms have moved out into the web, each show's fan base now hosts awards; and most have more than one. Some of these competitions are strenuously, maybe even rigidly overseen and voted upon, with multiple rounds of voting and a panel of judges. Most are not. It's pretty easy to figure out which are which, and thus which competitions deserve the name, and which are puff-fluff ribbons from author's friends. The three I mentioned above are not ones which I consider "fluff". There's fairly clear-cut standards, and the voting is being checked carefully. Others may think that they still don't go far enough, that there needs to be judges. But there's a reason that doesn't happen often.
The most rigidly enforced competitions, the ones with actual judges, or screened voting, or weighted voting, are the most likely not to be held again. Because people, it is a lot of *work* to count those votes. It is a lot of effort to make sure the categories are organized correctly, and to listen to the bitching and moaning of nominees, fans, and disgruntled authors who didn't get nominated. Fandom does not have a Price-Waterhouse equivalent. Would that an audit of well-paid and endlessly patient accountants wanted the job, but they don't. It is even more effort to find unbiased, willing, dependable people with time on their hands to read every submitted story and then grade it according to a scale. Bitching at the organizers is the least fair thing that can be done; these people have an incredibly thankless job. The Halo Awards went under just because it *was* too hard to keep up the effort needed to get this kind of judging done. The Treasury (Smallville fanfic) awards were held up due to unavoidable delays, mostly due to efforts to try and make the voting *more fair*, and the organizers were subjected to extremely mean-spirited criticism for it.
By the way, that's where I got my first fanfic award. Treasury Award for Best Crossover. And does anyone know that? No. Why? Because when the organizers *did* get stuff up, people had already forgotten about it. They didn't even get a thank-you for trying. All that effort to run a fair competition, and it sinks into obscurity, because internet life moves too fast to pay attention to last month's awards.
What does this tell us about how long people are going to remember that you won that shiny award?
If I wanted, I could have a page full of all my nomination buttons, which outnumber my awards by about 10 to 1. Some of my stories nominated in the Stargate Fanfic Awards are four years old, and have been nominated every single year since I put them on the web. They haven't won any awards yet. I don't expect them to. I am now... mostly okay with that. (I haven't achieved sainthood yet, though.) But I admit to cheerfully looking forward to certain authors kicking my butt in the Alias FOF awards, and different ones doing the same thing in Stargate. That's okay. Some of those authors truly deserve it, and if they win, I'll shrug and know that there's always next year. Some of them are just better known, more popular, and more prolific. The odds are just in their favor. C'est la vie. There are comments I've gotten, recommendations of my work that people have made, that have filled me with *much* more glee than any award banner, because I know these people, and their standards are much higher than any competition could ever be. This has helped my attitude more than anything, I think. Winning an award is nice. Winning respect from those you respect is better.
But for those times when the gods laugh at us and some talentless nitwit stuffs the ballot box-- or at least, when that seems more believable than reality-- I recommend reading your best feedback from your readers. Talking to friends who've beta'd your work, figure out if you *can* improve. Reading any recommendation of any story you've written on a recs website. Writing another story, to have something to submit for next year's competitions.
Not whining, and bitching, and insulting the winners and the awards panel anonymously in public forums. NOT claiming you were robbed. Not figuring out how to skew the curve next time. This is the behavior of 10-year-olds deprived of gold stars and cookies at a spelling bee, not aspiring writers. We might be writing fanfic, but honestly, most of us are adults. If a writer can't act graciously, said writer doesn't deserve the sparkly award button.
You can always make yourself a banner that says "winner!" if you really need an award that badly. Otherwise? Try to keep it in perspective. The stories that change fandom-- or change the fans' perception of their show, or are read by *every single person* who likes that kind of fanfic-- don't need awards. They don't need prizes. They sink in and become fanon, or they become a rallying point for writers who've read it. I could name the authors who have won awards they richly deserved, but that won't tell you as much as saying the names of their stories. Because those stories get remembered, sometimes so well that people think they saw them on-screen. Which is a better award than any button.