Christmas Engagement Win

[rhetoretician]

Today it was announced that While You Tell Yourself the Truth  tied for the "Most Adventurous" award for SIYE's Christmas Engagement Challenge.  This will make it a "Featured Story" on SIYE.

While I'm thrilled and grateful to be so recognized, I also have some mixed feelings.  For one thing, the story tied with

Comments

[madderbrad]

They were *both* good stories, okay? :-) Plenty to find of qualilty in both, and I enjoyed reading them both, so case closed! :-)

Although that conclusion of yours, giving promise of a seventh book wherein it's just Harry and Hermione together doing the Horcrux Hunt, does tend to make 'While You Tell Yourself the Truth' pip all others at the post, really ... but that might be a particularly subjective evaluation, just maybe! :-)Seriously, they both had good amounts of 'adventure', which is the classification under which your story won. 'Phoenix' started out with an excellent action-packed prologue which really got the blood pumping and then made me even more on Harry's side when I discovered how he'd been vilified for his heroics. But your story likewise had a ripper of an opening that had me worried about our heroes and an aftermath which also established nicely the core premise of the tale, how the two couples would have to split up. Plus the Malfoy battle was another neat slab of 'adventure' in your fic, ramming home the

[rhetoretician]

Brad, thanks. I'm glad you liked it and I agree with your logic.

But please don't misunderstand me: I'm not down on myself, nor on the story. I'm mulling over what this whole judging / awards / reviews / notoriety / positive reinforcement / external validation thing means to me. Isn't it odd that I can't just brag about winning a prize? What's going on there?

[sovranspecific]

I'll start by saying how honored I am to have won diddly-squat, given how good the other stories (yours included) are and how very far from the stated 'theme' of the challenge I wrote. You can ask Chreechree, who was my front-line beta for Phoenix; I started out writing the story because I wanted to write it and fully understanding that it was not the sort of thing that would win. I was quite proud of it both as a story and as a writing experience, but I remain a bit surprised that it won anything. Thank you for the effusively kind words above

[rhetoretician]

As for the effusion, I found the story moving and, as I got into it, very skillful. I gush, but it's well-informed gushing

[girlspell]

Catalogies are hard to contain when many of them spill over onto others. Still, congratualtions!

[rhetoretician]

I agree. Thanks!

[chreechree]

Howdy ho! I actually finally created a LJ account just so I could talk about this a bit. I know it's not necessary to do so, but - eh. Maybe one day I'll actually put something on there myself

[rhetoretician]

Okay, Christine. No more self-deprecation. (Honestly I wasn't trying to self-deprecate.)

It's true that this time, judges were picked based simply on their willingness to judge. I'm told that that's different from other times. But the very decision to be a judge also implies a willingness to read an awful lot of stuff and to try to be fair. It's not like the "People's Choice" concept where the loudest voice wins. I liked being in that company.

Thanks for the vote -- "Aw, Josh's jocular jots, honey, I love you too." (Oh -- maybe I shouldn't quote from not-yet-posted chapters?)

As for writing a Challenge story that doesn't feel like a Challenge story, that's why Dave's story is the hands-down winner. If you'd never heard of this Challenge you'd want to read it anyway. The same would be true of WYTYT, I think, if I could delete nearly all of the scenes with the twins and focus on what I now realize the story is about! (I didn't fully realize it, actually, until I was discussing it with Dave the other day. I now realize that