Awards Time

Calls for the finalists of the Golden Hearts and the RITA Awards go out today. If you’re wanting to keep track, Lexi Connor sent out this link to Judi Fennell’s site via the chapter loop. Ms. Fennell’s trying to maintain a list of who’s gotten The Call, but the official list should hit the RWA site sometime tomorrow. I’ve managed not to check it obsessively this morning, but only because I’ve been away from my computer until now.

For those of you unfamiliar with the awards, the Golden Hearts are the highest award RWA offers for completed, unpublished manuscripts. The RITA is the highest award RWA offers for books published within the past year. It’s kinda like the Oscars for the romance writing world.

Does winning either a Golden Heart or a RITA help a writer’s career? From what I understand, winning a GH may help you get your foot in the door with an agent or an editor. It certainly looks good on a query letter, but it doesn’t guarantee anything. And a RITA doesn’t necessarily help or hurt a career. Do you buy a movie because it has “Winner of the 2007 BEST PICTURE” on the cover or because you like the synopsis or heard from a friend that it was a good movie? Some people might buy the book because of the award (I’m certainly planning on reading up on the finalists), but the numbers are fairly small in the general scheme of things, I’d think, since a person would have to be familiar with the world of RWA to know about it. And despite the overwhelming number of people at the national conference, our world is a small one.

So why would a person enter either the Golden Hearts or the RITAs, you might ask, especially since it’s a $50 entrance fee? For the prestige, of course. Your work is judged by your peers, and to get a nod from them saying that it’s among the best in the genre (or at least among the best entered in the genre) is a thrill.

Not that I’m speaking from personal experience, mind you.

So good luck to all the hopefuls out there, and continued good luck to all the finalists! I can’t wait for the awards ceremony at the conference.