The Vorkosigan Companion - Lillian Stewart Carl [29]
Therefore, due to the inherently subjective nature of reading, awards are not won by the writer, as in a race—they are given, as gifts, by other people to the writer. To attempt to control something one cannot, in fact, ever control—the actions of others—is a short route to madness. Writers can control what they write. Full stop. Everything that happens after is some class of unintended consequence or chaotic emergent property.
That said, the validation of winning awards is enormously gratifying. Winning one's first major award does a lot to make a new writer more visible (wasted if one does not then produce a follow-up book in short order), and winning the second helps prove that the first wasn't a fluke. After that it becomes a matter of diminishing returns, in terms of the practical consequences or, as it were, economic utility of the things. These are not as magnificent as the average fan imagines; an award is good for generating a few thousand more domestic paperback sales and for garnering foreign sales if one isn't getting such already; but the foreign SF markets are tiny. (Which they make up partly in numbers, if you can collect the whole set.) Over time, awards help but do not guarantee works to stay in print or get reprinted.
I discovered when I won my first Nebula back in the late Eighties that while I might put blank pages under that classy paperweight at night, there would be no words magically appearing on them in the morning. Writing the next book is the same slog, only now with heightened expectations. "Each one better than all the others" seems to be the demand.
LSC: Was there any one award which meant more to you than any other?
LMB: Probably the most important was the first, the Nebula for Falling Free, which made folks sit up and take notice. I was very pleased when Barrayar won its Hugo, because I didn't think it could win back-to-back with The Vor Game like that, and it was the book closer to my heart. The Hugo for Paladin of Souls was great, first, because I am hugely fond of its heroine Ista, and second because it finally stopped people driving me crazy by saying brightly, "Just one more and you'll match Heinlein!" It's not a race, drat it.
I have no idea why some of my books draw awards and other don't, except that the ones I spent the least time worrying about other people's response to—that I wrote for myself—seem to do the best of all.
LSC: Why are some books closer to your heart?
LMB: Whenever a writer who has produced more than one volume is asked to name their favorite, it is almost the routine to respond with some mumble about choosing among your books being like choosing among one's children, each has its strengths and weaknesses, you really can't say. This is actually a lie. Not all books are created equal, and for the special ones, you begin to know it sometimes even before the work is finished, but always by the time you slam that last line home and shriek, "Done! Done!," and fall head-down across your keyboard like the runner from Marathon.
Some books reach higher, dig deeper, take more terrifying chances. And you know it, when you've done it; you can't do something like that and not know it. You then spend the next two years sweating through the publication process, those first reviews, the first sales figures, waiting and hoping that you haven't deluded yourself—because you most certainly can delude yourself—waiting for that validation and biting your tongue against any words you might be compelled to eat later.
LSC: Speaking of validation, on the "photos" section of the Dendarii site, you are captured with your amazing necklace of award tie tacks. You mention looking at them in the box and thinking "thirteen tie tacks and no neckties. Deconstruct the subtext of this one, grrls."
LMB: Mike Resnick has a wonderful sort of "South American Colonel" look when valiantly wearing all his rocket pins at Worldcons, but