Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Judging a book

So my books to judge for the RITA-- RWA's prestigious award for excellence in writing--showed up today. Four books of various subgenre's of romance. As soon as I opened the box, I flipped through the books, read the back cover copy and read the opening paragraph. All the things I do when I'm at the book store looking for something to read. Then I stacked them in the order to which they appealed from my 'shopper' perusal. Over the next few weeks I'll read them during my down time (not writing time). When I'm done with each book, I'll assign it a numeric score from 9 being best to 1 being worst. This part of judging is always very unsettling for me. I feel a great deal of responsibility to judge fairly but judging is subjective. What draws me into a story may not be what draws another reader. So I'll do my best and give as fair a score as possible and hope that I've done my job well.

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