fandom awards and the nature of stories

So Kali and I placed as runner-ups in two categories for The Children of Time Awards, and there is a thread about it here.

The oldest cliche in the world, especially when you work as an actor is, "it's an honor just to be nominated." I won't quite say that, but I will say this:

It is gratifying.

As writers, we talk so often about writing the stories we need to tell. But that's not really true, is it? The truth is that we write the stories we need to have heard. And we want more readers not just out of a desire for praise or money (as appropriate to the product/medium), but because we need people, we need strangers, to feel our loves, our griefs and to see us as we really are even as the shapes our our bodies and our lives may seem to give a lie to that.

So yeah, I am damn glad to be nominated, and to place, because it means more people might now listen. More people might now know.

Do I sometimes wonder what the fuck is going on with awards? You bet. I can't fucking believe Crash got best picture a few years back. I can't believe Children of Men wasn't nominated for anything.

Are there things that are popular that I don't get? Or sometimes even wish weren't? Yup. I don't have the receptor sites for anime and Twilight scares the crap out of me for the species.

But they mean something to people. They reflect the nature of things, or secret desires or the tone of hope for many, many people of whom I am apparently not among.

I'm competitive by nature. And when I don't win something -- in any endeavor -- I tend to flail about, but in this case, I find myself not caring. Had I even remembered to vote in the Children of Time Awards, I probably would have voted for the story by dsudis that I think we were up against in a given category, because it broke me and because there is always a divine shock to see my own story told in some way by someone else. Sometimes, I know IHNIIHBT too well to feel the gut punch of it whenever I want.

Our story is hard. Very detailed, very confronting, long sentences -- it's a tiring fucking read, and it is not the story everyone wants to read. The idea that love is hard work and hard work never makes it easy, never makes it enough. That's a heartbreak, even with a happy ending.

The stuff that did win in The Children of Time Awards? I've read swathes of because it's there to be read. Some of it I get, some of it I don't. From a structural standpoint, I'm not impressed in many cases, but it's taken me over a decade to learn how to do structure the way we do, and there's still tons of shit about structure we're still learning and refining. From a narrative point of view when it comes to that same stuff: I'm not heterosexual, I don't have children, and my emotional life is not a domestic one because of the nature of what my partner and I do for livings, where we live, and what our responsibilities are and aren't. I simply don't have the receptor sites.

In some ways, I will confess, it makes me sad how many people do have the receptor sites, if only because I once lived a life that would have fit so much better with the reading of such stories, and I was deeply unhappy in it. But that of course is more a testament to me, than it is to that life. At least so I hope, for all concerned. I hope the people there and dreaming there are happy.

So I and my friend write stories for the lonely ones, the strange ones, the difficult lovers and the oddly formed, because we are, and we need people to hear and to know. And quality and trophies and titles and all of that aside, we're just so grateful when anyone listens, because then we become not just true, but also real.