You Did It
February 12, 2002
7:21 a.m.
I have an issue of Asimov's on my desk--December 2001, if you must know. The names on the cover are: Connie Willis, Kage Baker, Stephen Baxter, John M. Ford, and Robert Silverberg. You might pause to notice these names. My guess is that the date on the issue could just as well have been 1991 as 2001.   Lisa and I stayed up to watch the Olympic pairs skate yesterday. Figure skating is among Lisa's favorite Olympic sports and the event was carried live, so we stayed up to watch it. I'm paying the price this morning, but what the heck--we stayed up the night before to see the downhill, which is my favorite, so we're even-steven. If you haven't heard the result, the Russian pair (Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze) beat the Canadian pair (Jamie Sale and David Pelletier) by a single vote, five judges to four. Also, if you haven't heard, the Russians skated very well, but made an error. The Canadians skated after them, and brought the house down with what seemed to my uneducated eyes to have been about a perfect routine. The crowd gave them a standing ovation. Pelletier kissed the ice. Sale just looked overwhelmed with pride. If you know these things, you probably also know that the last time a Russian pair lost an Olympic competition was something like 40 years ago. There is a saying in boxing that you have to beat the champion, meaning, of course, that you have to win decisively. The saying around our world--the world of people struggling valiantly to break into the ranks of the routinely published, is that you can't succeed by merely writing stories that are as good as the people who have alread reached that lofty state--meaning that you have to be noticeably better. I can live with that. I really can. I understand it, despite the fact that it seems, well, kind of rigged. But when I'm better than an established pro, I want my ticket punched. That's only fair, right? When I put my heart and soul into a project and it comes out exactly as I intended it to, I want to see it in print. I want to hold it in my hand. I think this is why the results of last night's skating are carrying over into my thoughts today. Sale and Pelletier were at their best. Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze were good, but not outstanding. The skaters knew they had won. The crowd knew they had won. The announcers knew they had won. And I, the non-expert sitting in my living room watching from 2,000 miles away knew they had won. The only people who didn't know the Canadians had won were five judges--and they, of course, were the only ones that counted. I know, I know. Maybe I'm missing something in my ignorance of the sport. Maybe Sale's left skate was a centimeter too high as she went into her double mega super dee duper death spiral, or something like that. Maybe the Russian pair truly deserved to win. They were very good, after all. But I don't think so--and it's bothering me in a way that is very hard to really explain. The telecast ended last night with an image of Jamie Sale dabbing tears backstage and walking away. As she was going by one of her support crew--coach or Mom, I assume--the older woman grabbed her by the shoulders and looked into Sale's face. "You did it," she said in forceful terms, fingers digging into the skater's shoulders. "You did it." A minute ago, just for the heck of it, I went to my shelf and grabbed an issue of Asimov's from 1991. The table of contents includes Jack McDevitt, Ian R. MacLeod, Lucius Shepard, and Bridget McKenna. No reason this one couldn't have been printed in 2001. I'm not complaining about that, like I said. These are good writers. In fact, the common saying around the industry (that all you have to do is write better than the established pros) is sometimes what keeps me going. "Surely I can do that," I think to myself in my most grandiose moments. But I'm sitting here hearing the tone of that woman's voice. "You did it." I know she was right. In my heart of hearts, I know the Canadian pair did it. But they didn't win. They didn't get their name on the cover. And so those words were not enough in this case. I don't like that. Unrewarded performance bothers me at a place that is very deep inside me. Life is hard enough down in the trenches. Even if you love the work, it's hard to gut it out day to day. When you perform at the highest level, you should win.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
|
BACK TO 
|