I rarely enter competitions. But then I’ve never come across a prize as unlikely and as promising as this one: a summer wandering around the ancient pathways of Britain with pen, camera and money in hand. If it weren’t for the fact that my summer is already booked up with responsibility and purpose, or that it’s a Penguin prize and therefore feels a little too close to home, or that I’m still a little shy of social networks, then I’d be abandoning my usual anti-competition stance and I’d be off. Anyway, it’s obviously not for me. But here’s more about it in case you think it’s one for you.
It was just over two years ago that I emerged from under a pile of manuscripts. I can date it back to my last day in publishing proper, the day that I pushed my keyboard to one side, drank champagne or its equivalent, said goodbye to everybody and left. Since then it's been a case of leading a relatively normal life. I say ‘relatively’ because I’m still implicated behind the scenes, but what I mean is this: I now read normal books.
I couldn't quite remember what it was like to pick up a book in a bookshop and think ‘I'll read that’. Or what it was like to read just for twenty minutes before switching out the light. Or to find the perfect book for the morning train ride. Instead, it was a case of bringing home piles of words that would follow me around, weighing me down both literally and metaphorically. These were years of finding long elastic bands in the bottoms of bags long after the manuscripts they’d embraced had found their way into recycling, and then, when gadgetry took hold, of letting small – but still clumsy – machines lighten the load.
Whatever their consistency, words demanded my attention in a way that normal words – words already published and secure in the knowledge that they existed – never would. These were insecure words, unpublished words, words that tugged at me until I had to read them. It was a tough life for them and a tough life for me.
But now it's not my job to be sifting, judging and bearing the weight of all that. I’ve single-handedly changed my job description and gradually, over the last twenty-something months, spread my reading wings.
So now I can go into a bookshop without feeling (quite so much) the tug of personal attachment. And I’m happy to have an opinion along with everyone else rather than ahead of them. In fact, I allow myself the privilege of judging a book by its cover because, for once, it already has one. And, perhaps most shockingly of all, I’m happy to pay good money for a good book. Because that’s the sign of a real reader, I’ve discovered: the chance to hold a book in one hand, £7.99 in the other and weigh up the real worth of words.
