A Slater up your Nose, by Catriona

What are your thoughts on book contests? Do you believe winning one can further your career? Which ones, if any, do you enter?

I was really chuffed

Re. the title of the blog: please don't be imagining a guy coming round to fix the roof and disappearing up a nostril instead. A "slater" in Scotland is a woodlouse (aka roly-poly, I believe). And why is it relevant? Because I've never been able to decide whether I'd rather be best-selling than award-winning or if I'd rather be either than critically-acclaimed. But let's face it: any of the three is better than a slater up your nose.

But we're talking about winning stuff this week, not about sales or plaudits.

Does winning the Nobel prize for literature further your career? Nah. I reckon once you're headed to Stockholm, you've peaked. 

How about the Pullitzer? Or, if you're in Britain, the Booker? Mos def, I'd say. I've bought Booker prize winners many a time, having seen them heaped up on a table at the front of a Waterstones. Bernardine Evaristo and Douglas Stuart certainly seemed to slip effortlessly from a Booker win to stardom. Mind you, both of them also seem like genuinely lovely individuals, warm and curious. 

Then there's the National Book Award and a memory I'm convinced is real although you tell me. When I was new here (back when I thought Escrow was a town where the realtor lived, and I thought Barney Fife was in The Flintstones) someone phoned me up and asked if I was American because I had to be to be considered for the National Book Award. I swear this is true, even though it seems like when "Keanu Reeves" used to follow you on Twitter (before it became Xitter (the X is pronounced "sh", by the way)).  

It was almost as unbelievable when I actually did get nominated for an Edgar award, more specific but no less prestigious. I didn't win but it was a great night (much more fun than the UK Dagger awards) and I cherish the happiest picture of author and editor ever.

Me and Terri Bischoff at the Edgars

Now we're getting to the awards I know about from having won them. The Agathas are wonderful, not least because the award itself a teapot (see above). And I think winning an Agatha award shortly after I arrived in the US did have an effect. It boosted me from complete obscurity to - I maintain - enough known-ness to cause the Sisters in Crime board to consider me for the presidency. Is that career furtherment? Kinda. 

Likewise the Anthonys, I think. I'd been here four years when I won for As She Left It and it was a boost of profile. There's an argument to be made that it was the surprise value of someone who wrote traditional historicals suddenly up and writing a dark modern psychothriller that caused the awards action (like a dog walking on its hind legs: it's the fact that it's doing it at all . . .) 

Love this jacket!

One of my happiest memories is associated with that image on the front of of As She Left It. I was at the American Library Association shindig in Seattle, sitting behind a heap of these books with an uncapped Sharpie. A harried librarian rushed past, stopping only to say "Why is all YA set in dystopia these days?". I didn't get the chance to say "That's not dystopia; that's Britain." Ah well. (It's not YA either; she's just got youthful jeans on.)

So, in conclusion, a lot of nice things have happened to me in my writing career: going to the ALA, SinC, keynote invitations, Guest of Honour offers . . . and, since we don't get to run the control in life, I'll never know how much of that would have happened if I'd written exactly the same books but not been entered for or nominated for prizes. During hoc ergo propter hoc, right?

Now, I had already planned what to write for this blog - I know; it's hard to believe - when I read Eric's yesterday and realised that the awards I've talked about aren't contests. Contests are something else. Contests are what the question was addressing. All I can add to what he had to say is this: do not pay to enter. You might be out of pocket to the tune of a copy or two of your book and media mail to get them to the judges, if the contest asks for physical submissions, but that's it. Contests, like publishers and Nobel academies, should pay us, not the other way round.

Cx    

Contests.