Let me begin by saying that I have no opinion about what categories we should have for the Kerth’s this year. I trust the Kerth committee to make those decisions.
But there is one thing I would like to say. Like it or not, I do think the Kerth committee is a leader in terms of what stories get written. For example, it would never have occurred to me that such a creature as a ‘series’ even existed if there hadn’t been a Kerth category for it. I would have simply thought an author wrote a story and then, afterwards, decided that they wanted to write a second story which followed from the first. However, knowing that there was such a creature, I turned my mind to trying to write one. And that’s what I did this year for Without A Superman. When I wrote the first word of Without A Superman (Clark Kent’s Quest), I knew that there were going to be three stories which were going to have completely different and distinct A plots and yet were going to have a B plot which ran throughout. To me, each story stands on it’s own and yet none of the stories should be read without the others. But I would never have written that story if the Kerth category of ‘series’ hadn’t given me the idea.
I also find myself reading the discussion every year about whether a Drama should have an A-plot and it always leaves me thinking that people in this fandom don’t particularly like A-plots. Since I’m not a good enough writer to write a story without an A-plot, I must admit that I find that the idea saddens me. It makes me less inclined to write stories because I sort of figure that my stories aren’t what people really want to read anymore.
Anyway, those are my thoughts.
