RITA GETS REVAMP AT RWA NATIONALS

The big news in the romance writing world this week is the Romance Writers of America® national conference going on now in New York City. Although the event may not attract as many authors, agents, publishers and hangers-on as in the days when traditional publishing ruled (or maybe it has—romance just keeps growing!), it is sure to be a glittery, exciting week for both newbies and veterans alike.

Sadly, the last ever Golden Heart® Finalists will celebrate their nominations in the contest for unpublished manuscripts. And this year’s class of RITA® nominees will wait to hear who has won the award for best romance novel (or novella) in each of several categories after the judging process drew controversy over a lack of fairness, objectivity and diversity.

For those of us who are members of RWA® but are unable to attend, the news out of the conference has already been stunning. The Board of Directors has announced changes for next year’s RITA® contest reflecting the broad, sometimes heated, discussions held within the membership concerning RITA® judging this year. The rule changes can be read here.

What they show is that, for once, the RWA® leadership appears to have taken the outcry from its membership to heart. RITA® entrants will no longer be required to be first-round judges in the contest. Instead, the pool of those eligible to judge the first round of the contest will be expanded to all General RWA members, Associate Writer RWA members, non-member RITA entrants, current or former booksellers and librarians, and romance reviewers with an interest in, and knowledge of, the romance genre. Anyone of those eligible who is interested in serving as a judge must fill out a Judge Volunteer Questionnaire, then, if selected, must complete special judge training. (Italics mine.)

I never received an answer to my email to the Board on what should be done to fix RITA®, but it seems someone did read it (or something like it). Training for judges was my Number One suggestion, so I’m over the moon about this.

The contest will remain limited to 1200 entries, but individual authors will be limited to one entry in the first seven days. After that time, if there is still room, an author can submit no more than one additional entry at a higher entry fee. (That is, for a total of two entries.) This new rule will give more authors a chance to enter, widening and, hopefully, diversifying the base of entries.

I won’t be entering RITA® in 2020. I’m way too far behind in my writing to produce a book by the end of 2019 due to the focus on production and promo in my turn to self-publishing for my earlier books. But I will be judging under the new rules. I actually look forward to it.

However, I have some advice for those who may have misgivings. This past weekend I attended the 40^th Annual Isshinryu Hall of Fame Tournament and Awards Banquet in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where my karate teacher, Renchi Ray Blazer, received the prestigious Instructor of the Year Award. I had already decided I wouldn’t judge in the tournament, despite being eligible at fourth-degree black belt rank. I hadn’t been in the dojo (gym) for four years, and I figured it wouldn’t be fair to the competitors. When I heard some of the new rules for sparring, it turns out I was right to decide to sit this one out. I didn’t agree with some of the changes designed to make our traditional style more “competitive” with mixed martial arts. Times had passed me by—better for me to keep my “old-school” thoughts to myself. After all, there were at least 100 black belts of my rank and above to serve as judges.

Perhaps a bit of that same kind of soul-searching is required with the new RITA® judging rules. Not everyone will be comfortable with what’s taught in the training, for example, or even with the idea of training at all. If the new judging rules can’t be embraced whole-heartedly, maybe it’s best to sit this one out as a judge. With a bigger pool of eligible judges to draw from, others will be eager to take on the task. 

And let’s see how far these changes can take us toward a better future.

Cheers, Donna

RITA HAS A SO-WHITE MOMENT

Last week the Romance Writers of America® announce the finalists in its annual RITA® contest for published authors. Amid the usual excitement and squeals of delight for and from the honored authors there came first a whisper, then a rumble, then a howl of outrage that, again this year, there were no authors of color (AOC) among the writers named. Not just no black authors, but no Latinx authors, no LGBTQ authors, and damn few characters representing these communities either. Again.

From these communities within RWA® legitimate anger and frustration was expressed openly, particularly in the Professional Authors Network (PAN) loop. And that’s when the trouble really began. Because some of the things said in response to criticism of the RITA® process only served to prove the point that there is an underlying structure of bias, prejudice, even racism and sexism within RWA®. (Here’s a thought: When entering a discussion on color, don’t start by saying, “I don’t see color.” If the subject is racism, don’t begin with the line, “I’m not a racist, but . . .”)

Not surprisingly, the online discussion rapidly degenerated into name-calling, self-justification and personal bullying, until the RWA® President was forced to step in and call at least one individual out.

I won’t address the larger questions of RWA®-so-white here except to say that the organization that was co-founded by a black author has seen a lot of changes since the 1980s, even since 2009 when I first joined. Not all these changes have been positive. This bigger, “more professional” RWA® is not more inclusive, or more open, or more encouraging to newer writers, or indies, or AOC or authors of any marginalized populations than it used to be. I see this as a loss, both for RWA® and for those authors and their readers, or potential readers.

RITA:Not so shiny now? Maybe some changes are in order.

At least the uproar over this year’s RITA® nominations did have one positive outcome—the President announced changes would be made to the way the contest would be judged in the first round in future years to avoid some of the worst of the biases we’ve seen in past years, biases that were painfully clear in some of the comments on the PAN forum. (See the President’s statement here.)

One person, for example, said for personal reasons, she only read books with the hero’s POV, never the heroine’s. She refused to read anything in first-person POV, either. Can you imagine this person as a judge? Many people said they couldn’t relate to a character of color, or a non-hetero couple. How could they be fair judges? And if this is their reaction to anything outside a narrow band of their own experience here on Earth, how open would they be to anything set on another world, or with otherworldly beings?

The problem is not necessarily that anyone who enters the RITA® must be a first-round judge. It is that untrained and inexperienced judges are given NO technical criteria by which to judge the books they are given. Judges must answer only three questions about each entry: Does the entry contain a central love story? Is the resolution of the romance emotionally satisfying and optimistic? Does the entry fall within the category description? Then the entry must be awarded a point score based on . . . whatever. If an individual judge has experience with judging chapter contests, s/he will use those technical criteria on characterization, plot, pacing, etc.  to make a judgment. If not, the judgment will be subjective and very open to individual bias (eg. I don’t read first-person POV; I can’t relate to black heroines. Aliens? Yuck!) Without any real criteria to go by, judges rely on cronyism, author popularity/name recognition and “what I like.” If we made the RITAs a reader-based contest, this kind of thing would only get worse.

Every year the contest organizers ask for our feedback; every year I’ve said we need to institute real technical criteria for judging. Even better, we need to train judges. We did that at my Virginia Romance Writers chapter, and VRW ran one of the most respected chapter contests in the nation, the Holt Medallion contest. It seems to me the national organization should look to its chapters for help as it reorganizes this contest.

Lest you think, as an indie writer or an SFR author, that this controversy has no relevance to you, I would ask you to consider just why, year after year, there are so few SFR titles nominated for RITA®, so few indie or self-published authors nominated. Peers should nominate peers, but the categories are constructed to force paranormal and SFR writers to compete against each other, rather than judge each other, as we should. Very few authors (or readers, really) read broadly across categories. So the cronyism works against little-known or “niche” writers like SFR authors. I continue to suggest, year after year, that SFR be split off from the paranormal category so contestants in these two genres can judge each others’ work. At least an author of vampire romances that require some world-building would be better placed to understand my novels than an author of small-town contemporaries.

But maybe this year, RWA® will be more open to suggestions like mine. I urge you, too, to contact the leadership with your own ideas as to how the RITA®s can be improved. Act now, before this contest goes the way of the late, lamented Golden Heart®.

Cheers, Donna