On a personal note: You might remember back in February I asked for input about which blog articles to submit to the Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards. They have a Non-Fiction/Blog category and I had placed Silver with them in 2020, and was hoping to make a mark for this year.
I went with four articles (I could max out to five), along with the short story submission "War of the Murder Hornets" to mix it up a little.
Well, the judging panel finally reached back to me and...
You know, I could have sworn the article about the reality of trump having a Presidential Library would have been relevant and coherent enough to get past the Semifinalist stage... /sigh
I had submitted that one along with Not All Heroes Wear Capes about John Lewis' passing, and How America Fell Into the Darkest Timeline of 2020 due to their relevancy and partly non-partisan rancor. They too did not reach Semifinalist levels. /sigh
I haven't heard back about this one - The Five Reasons trump Refuses to Concede - and so I may yet have some good news that my political blogging isn't out of vogue. (Update 8/14: Aaaaannnddddd nope that didn't make Semifinalist either.)
Oh, and they didn't like the Murder Hornets either.
I should note that judging depends a lot of who volunteers to read and score the submissions, which changes every year. It depends a lot on the mood, whims, and personal belief structure of those judges - even as they're required to leave such world-views at the door in order to be impartial - so I may have well gotten a judge or two this time who were ardent trump voters (this IS Florida, alas. Also, "alas" has become my word of the year, please punch me if I keep using it too much).
I served as a judge for a couple of years, before they opened up Non-fiction to Blogging (when they did in the interests of fairness I dropped out so I could submit to that category without conflict). I should mention I judged a lot of Non-Fiction works that I scored harshly due to factors such as "lack of research" and "lack of citations to outside data or materials that could back your claims." I'm sorry, but as a librarian and researcher, I value the ability - the right - to examine the merits of a claim with the facts that prove that claim. I had several Non-fiction books to review where I agreed with the author's opening arguments... and still graded them poor because they failed to cite their facts. Alas. (punch) Owww stop hitting me.
I got one submission from someone who WASN'T a scholar on the subject who claimed his "copyrighting" of an idea on that subject made him an expert (um, no, an expert goes through an educational vetting process towards an accredited degree, and then garners recognition from peers in that field through a series of published works that demonstrate due diligence to facts while generating results that are reproducible by said peers), and the first three chapters for review were mostly about how he gained insight where everyone else hadn't (also, he offered no outside citations). "Death of Expertise" indeed. When I blog, I at least try to provide links to sources that back up what I'm ranting aboot...
That all said, I don't blame the judges if I didn't pass muster this year. I do recognize my rants aren't for everyone, and my writing style perhaps not to their tastes.
As they say in baseball, Better luck next year.
Also, the Rays are poised to win the AL East again this year. Maybe if I blogged about that...
(gets judges who are Marlins fans) aw DAMMIT!
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