Sunday 21 September 2014

Is it an Award? Is it a Competition?


From tomorrow, the five stories shortlisted  for the BBC National Short Story Award (NSSA) will be broadcast on Radio 4, one each day. I'm not sure how many I'll catch live, as they go out mid-afternoon when I'm usually working, but I'll make sure I download the podcasts once they're made available.

This was the first year in quite a while that I wasn't holding my breath and listening to the announcement of the shortlist with the absurd and fading hope that my name would be read out. I didn't enter this year's competition. Part of my decision was, admittedly, down to me not having written a story of suitable length, subject matter, and quality. However, a far greater part was attributable to the lingering sour taste left by last year's revelation by one of the judges that the way the competition was run meant the final selection might be, possibly, not actually being judged as anonymously as everyone had assumed.

I wrote that post almost a year ago and, while I was pleased to see that for the 2014 Award the organisers had updated the Terms & Conditions to make the situation regarding the final stage of judging much clearer, there are still elements of it that concern me. Here's the relevant section from the rules:
4.3 Some judges may reserve the right to read the longlisted stories anonymously, however they are not required to do so. The whole panel will be provided with the name of the author of each longlisted story ahead of shortlisting to ensure all judges are party to the same information when making their decisions. At this stage, judges may call-in entries from authors whose stories were not longlisted in stage 1.
So, we know the final-stage judges are given the names of the authors, and that it's down to them whether or not they ignore those names. That's strange but, OK, fair enough, if that's how they want to run things. It's that last sentence that doesn't entirely make sense. Are the judges entitled to call in stories that didn't make it past the initial readers? Isn't that like a football team winning the World Cup even though they were knocked out of contention at the group stage? Considering only the longlisted stories are forwarded to the judges, does that include stories they haven't read? Or maybe it's even stranger than that; as the stories can be previously published (as long as it's within the 12 months before the closing date), can the judges bring in stories they've read elsewhere - stories that weren't actually entered in the competition?

The problem, I think, is that the BBC is in an awkward situation. They need good stories, but they also need authors who are recognisable enough for people who aren't really into short fiction to take an interest and get on board with the idea that the Award is a genuine reflection of the 'best' of the work that's currently out there. Consequently, it's not really a competition, but it's not quite a straightforward award, either. And I wonder if that's why in some ways, although the stories are usually pretty impressive, the Award itself is beginning to feel a little stale. The shortlist seems to have fallen into a pattern whereby it contains two or three household names, a couple of lesser-known but well-established writers with a book or two to their name, and a newbie, who often turns out to have a novel or at least a collection of short fiction approaching publication.

Obviously I don't know exactly how the judges come up with the shortlist. There's no way of knowing how many of them ignore the names of the writers when making their decisions. Maybe they all do. Maybe even if they recognise a story they've read somewhere else they can somehow ignore that. Maybe none of them call in any other stories from the rejection piles or from outside the competition. Maybe all that stuff's in the rules just in case, but it's never been put into practice.

Whatever's happening, as a reader/listener, I can't help but think the quirks of the selection process might be contributing to the fact that the NSSA is getting a bit samey. Even 2014's all-female shortlist didn't attract much comment - because this is the third time in the Award's seven-year history that's happened. I'd love the whole thing to be a lot less predictable. I'd love to think the Award was bringing me exciting, new stories I couldn't hear or read anywhere else. I'd love, just once, for the shortlist to be announced and for me to have never heard of any of the writers. I'd love to believe that stories by talented writers at the start of their careers were competing on equal terms with those from established best-selling authors, that the quality of the story was the only thing that influenced the selection of the shortlist. At the moment, I'm not really feeling any of that.

Asked how it felt to be shortlisted for a third time, Lionel Shriver quipped, "Familiar". Well, quite. This year, three-fifths of the shortlist is recycled from elsewhere (Zadie Smith's story was in the Spring 2014 edition of The Paris Review, while Tessa Hadley's and Lionel Shriver's both appeared in The New Yorker towards the end of last year).The NSSA is one of the biggest and most prestigious literary prizes in the UK. It should be many things, but I don't think "familiar" should be one of them.

Friday 5 September 2014

Hopping Mad?

"Mad as a Box of Frogs" by Becky Brown. Used here by kind permission of the artist.

Twitter and Facebook were ablaze earlier this week with the unfolding (or should that be 'unravelling'?) story of a writer who had taken exception to some (to be honest, rather mild) criticism about a book he had created with iBooks Author. The full exchange can be read HERE. Be warned, you might need a large pot of coffee if you hope to get through it all in one go.

If you have better things to do than trawl through all that, suffice to say it's another example of a writer launching what I'm sure he believes is an entirely justified defence of his work, standing up for his artistic integrity, etc, etc. He asserts that the reviewer is factually wrong to, for instance, call his prose "workmanlike", and goes on (in an extraordinary series of twenty-three comments, posted over ten hours (and that's just the start!)) to post extracts from his work, saying some of his descriptions are worthy of Keats or F Scott Fitzgerald. As far as he's concerned, he's doing the critic a favour, by highlighting examples of his writing that prove the review is incorrect.

The problem is, writers don't get to do that. When somebody reads something we've published, their response to it is entirely outside our control. If they think the prose is workmanlike, or the plot is unoriginal, or the characters are unconvincing, then our only option is to take it on the chin. It's only one person's opinion, after all. If several people say the same thing, that probably highlights a weak spot that would be worth concentrating on when it comes to the next book, story, or poem. What we don't get to do is fly off the handle, accusing the reviewer of telling lies or being ignorant. Because that will only ever make you look like a complete nutcase.

I think the only case when it might be appropriate to response to a review is when there has been a genuine factual error - for instance if they've misspelled your name, or got the book title, ISBN, or release date wrong. Anything else, you just have to let go. And even if there is something justifiable, then a discreet email to the reviewer or editor of the publication in question is a far better option than waging all-out war in the comments thread.

Personally, I'm going to keep hold of the link to this particular example of a writer in meltdown. If, in the future, I find myself published and on the receiving end of what I consider to be an uncharitable review, and I feel my fingers creeping towards the keyboard to unleash the kind of righteous indignation that only a writer can muster, I will stop, read the entire "Venice Under Glass" thread from start to finish, and then see if I can summon up the will to tear into the reviewer in the same way. Chances are, I won't. And that can only be a good thing.


In one of the happy accidents that the internet often throws my way, while I was looking for a picture to illustrate this post I chanced across the work of Becky Brown. Her animal illustrations are fantastic - full of life and personality. If you like them as much as I do, please go and take a look at the wonderful prints and cards for sale in Becky's shop.