Marion Agnew

I haven't been writing here as often recently because I am working on a long-term project, for which I am very grateful. It is a writing-slash-teaching project, in that I'm writing about writing and teaching writing by writing about writing. Which means I produce a lot of words. Thousands. For just that project. Which makes me enjoy not-wording sometimes. I'm also revising revising revising. Revising. On a mid-August deadline. And vacationing with my sister in July, culminating in a family reunion at which my husband will be able to observe a passel of Agnew cousins. In amongst the revising. Plus with the revising of writing, with words and all. Whenever possible I do try to go outside and do things un-word-like. I can't seem to find anything interesting to say about that. Oh! I know!! We have seen a doe with one fawn and a doe with two fawns. Fawns are even more cute than you think they will be. In other news, Lori A. May had nice things to say about the B...

So I did something good, and I'm pretending it was a sign of maturity, though I think it was instinct. Regardless, it was good. Here's what it was: I made a distinction between awards for writing and awards for the author of that writing. Recently, I was involved in administering the NOWW Writing contest (last year's page: http://nowwwriters.org/?page_id=1641) (mark your calendars: similar deadlines for 2014). The awards for the contest winners were given out at the Literary Awards Party in May. In announcing the winners, I said, "The winning entry is...." Which is different from giving the award to the writer. It may sound "just semantics" (a phrase guaranteed to get my back up), but hey, we're word people, and we know the importance of words. Here's the thing. I saw a lot of the entries in this contest, this year and in previous years. Lots of good writing didn't get awards. Screeners and judges are human, and humans have preferences....