In my neverending effort to keep from writing B3, I've decided to post a blog entry instead. It remains astonishing to me how much energy I expend to postpone getting to work.
Today, at least, I have a reason to blog. I received an email this morning informing me that Life As We Knew It is nominated for a Connecticut Nutmeg Book Award. I've put Connecticut (home, at least for the next ten minutes, to the number one women's and men's college basketball teams) on the list of states where LAWKI has been nominated for an award. I keep that list over at thirdmoonbook so that I won't be depressed seeing it here each time LAWKI fails to win. It's been nominated in a lot of states, so the risk of depression is quite high.
I decided very early on with LAWKI to define it as the book being nominated, rather than my being nominated, and that it didn't win, rather than it lost. I told myself it wouldn't feel so personal that way and that you can't lose what you don't have. But my guess is when the steady stream of announcements starts coming, and I don't see LAWKI at the top of the list anywhere, I will take it personally and I will feel like I lost.
Then again, it's better to be nominated and lose than never to be nominated at all. Way better.
I used to enter items at the Orange County (NY) Fair. Culinary kinds of things, which is pretty funny given my limited cooking skills (I boil a mean can of soup) My most memorable achievement was coming in second in a field of one for my chocolate cream pie. The judge felt it just wasn't blue ribbon worthy. The following year, I remained the only entrant, but I must have gotten a different judge, because I won.
I also got a blue ribbon for my popovers one year, but the victory comes with an asterisk. Popovers were judged by the pie judge, who keeled over after sampling the key lime pies. They pretty much grabbed the first person off the fairgrounds to continue the judging, and lucky for me, it was not a popover specialist.
I quit entering when it occurred to me (after many years; I'm not quick witted) that every single thing I do for a living gets judged, every word, every comma, every space between paragraphs. Given the constant scrutiny I must endure, why should I get judged for a hobby? Having no answer for that, and having won three blue ribbons already (one year my brother and I revolutionized the frozen dessert category by submitting ices and ice cream-before us, all frozen desserts were ghastly looking things floating in frozen Jello-with my brother taking first, and my getting second, so the next year I entered again and beat out all the ghastly looking things floating in Jello for another first place finish), I resigned from culinary competition.
Who knows how many judges I saved from keeling over with that single noble decision.
Well, fun though this has been, I probably should get back to B3. It hardly qualifies as a spoiler to say I left my characters in a pretty bad situation. But now I should see if I can make it any worse for them.
Who knows? Maybe I'll force them to judge key lime pies at the local county fair!
2 comments:
Look what just got announced? http://www.cal-webs.org/bluespruce/nominees.html
which means it received at least a dozen nominations from across the state. And, so you know, nominations are made by teens without any help from adults.
Interestingly, your books were nominated for this award twice before - 1986 and 1990. I also happen to know that d&g was nominated this year too, but not enough to make the final nominee list.
Thank you Jenna!
I am delighted, and have added Colorado to the list of states over at thirdmoonbook.
What a nice piece of news. I appreciate your telling me.
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