Merit

The debacle of the Hugo Awards is, for this year, over. Puppygate did not succeed and measures will probably be taken to ensure this doesn't happen again. Is that a good thing? They won't believe it is. They'll believe it is the establishment's way of shutting them out. They'll view this as a newspaper whack to the nose and feel even more isolated than before.

Should they feel that way? It isn't for me to say. People are entitled to their own feelings and perceptions. These days, personal identity politics are shaping a lot of both. When people who used to have all the toys see those toys given to outsiders, they believe they're being shut out for the sake of the new. When the outsiders see the old guard keeping the toys, they believe they're being shut out for the sake of the old. In some cases, on both sides, it can be true.

All I know is this . . . while everyone bickers over WHO should win awards and WHO should decide where things go from here, no one is actually producing anything creative. How can you? When you fuel your energy into bickering, debating, protesting, plotting against enemies, threatening people, and causing problems, it's difficult to have anything left to actually write. Every moment you spend arguing with someone on Twitter or spiralling out about injustices caused by the other side is a moment you're not creating your worlds and telling your stories.

I can only change me, so from now on, as much as I can, I'm going to accept, in rather good faith, that the people around me are viewing me and my work based on the merits of that work. If people love it, I'm going to accept that my work is worthy of that love. If they hate it, well, I'll assume it's not to their taste and that's just a matter of personality and has nothing to do with me being a woman or the other things that people might take a disliking to.

I'm not saying everyone has to do this. I'm just saying it's my plan. I know that life is too short to be wasted on arguments. We all have things we could be creating. It's better to focus on those.