Pretending to be a Writer

The Shore was originally going to come out in the first week of the Easter holiday, leaving me time to finish teaching and make my leisurely way down to the general London area before things could start happening. Then the publication date moved, and 'leisurly' turned to 'breakneck': everything has suddenly begun happening at once, and my students are probably wondering if I've been struck with amnesia and wandered off into the hinterlands under the impression that I am really a bunny rabbit. 

The good thing about everything suddenly happening at once is that I don't have enough time to settle comfortably into abject terror; by the time I reach the mild panic stage whatever I'm scared to be doing is already half over. 

Last week I went into London to sign about 600 books for Goldsboro, which was just plain fun, and was interviewed by Kirsty Lang for BBC Radio 4's Front Row, which was only terrifying at the beginning. The terror was well compensated for by being allowed into Broadcasting House, which is one of those experiences I didn't know I was allowed to hope for. 

And last night I got to participate in an "In Conversation" with Catherine Chanter, author of the fantastic novel The Well, at Dulwich Books in London. Being allowed to speak with such a well-read person about something we both love was wonderfully indulgent, and Catherine's allusions to Barthes nearly caused me to spontaneously combust with joy, but I didn't because there was an audience, and one oughtn't to combust in front of an audience that has gathered to hear one speak. Given that public speaking is reportedly the most common human fear, and that writers tend to be solitary by nature, it seems to me that it must have been a uniquely sadistic individual that decided that having writers talk in front of people would be a good idea. I'm quite sure that if I hadn't spent this term teaching I wouldn't have gotten through the evening. It was an almost ideal first event though, and supposedly the more of them I participate in the easier they will be. 

The next be-a-writer-in-public event I get to take part in is the Cambridge Literary Festival, on the 19th of April; since the panel is being run by Ali Smith there is a distinct possibility that I will be struck dumb by the adoration that seems to be common to those people who have had Ali as a teacher in the past. The Front Row interview airs on the third of April, so it's also possible that I will be struck dumb with horror at what my voice actually sounds like.

Reading in Norwich

It's time for me to break my one year plus streak of successfully avoiding public readings - I'm going to be reading at UEA Live on the 19th of March, which is just under a week away. The event is held at Cafe Bar Marzano in the Forum in Norwich and is free to get in - and I can attest from experience that the drinks are good. It kicks off at 7.15 in the evening, but it's the kind of thing that you want to get to reasonably early if you want to sit down - I've had to stand the past three times I've been. 

And in related news: the release date for The Shore has been moved up a week, to (coincidentally) the 19th. Which means that there will be copies for sale at UEA Live. Hey, babies in my family tend to come early. 

Payoff

The past three weeks or so have been monopolized by marking Writing Texts essays. The process went something like this: 

Retrieve batch of marking from the Hub. Harass Hub staff over pieces of marking that are inexplicably missing from the batch. Read the marking rubric. Read the essays and order them according to quality. Read the marking rubric again. Read the essays again, giving them comments in pencil, and decide on a ballpark grade. Read the marking rubric again. Harass Hub staff again over pieces that are still inexplicably missing. Read the essays again and type up summary comments, even though you know half your students won't read them. Read the marking rubric again. Start from the beginning because you have to integrate the newly-found missing pieces into the batch. Read all the essays again, and give them all number grades. Then read all the essays one more time and adjust the number grades relative to each other so as to be consistent across the batch. Then give the batch to the course convener, who will read all the essays and tell you why your marks are wrong. 

My family insists that no one else is putting in this much effort. Everyone else insists this is the only way to do it. 

I've only just given the Text essays to the convener, which means that I've only just had the chance to face my batch of assessed submissions for Creative Writing. Given the aforementioned process, you can probably guess how I felt pulling the first piece out of the envelope.  

So I want to tell the world: grading my writing students' work is like eating cake with both hands. It's like stepping into the ocean on a hot day. I keep forgetting that I'm not just reading fiction for the sake of reading fiction, and that I need to be writing comments as I go. Their work stuns me. 

So this is what teaching can be like. 

Dry-gulched by good news

I've been keeping my head down for the past few months, avoiding reviews and write-ups not as much in an 'I've transcended the need for other's approval of my work' way as in a 'holy crap how am I supposed to get all this marking done' way. Both of which, I suppose, garner the same result: I have even less of an idea of what's going on than usual.

So imagine my surprise when I got a text from Sara Helen (who is the kind of together person who usually knows what's going on) saying I was on the same longlist as Ali Smith. I assumed this meant that someone had done a round-up - x books that challenge the concept of structure, y books with female narrators, z books by authors with last names whose initial letter come after 'R' in the alphabet - that had been shared out for other's reading pleasure. But any list on which Ali Smith appears is bound to be a good list to be on, so I went to investigate.

The longlist in question happens to be for the Baileys Women's Prize.

The Prize's existence I was aware of before, but in much the same way I'm aware of knighthoods and the Nobel: it exits, other people are considered for it.

The Shore is one of twenty books in the running; the complete list can be read here and is utterly fantastic. And I'm counting that as my accomplishment for the decade, since the longlist is so much more than I'd been expecting - it wasn't so long ago that I was gearing myself up for agent rejections. I'm very glad that I wasn't aware that it was up for consideration, and I'm somewhat regretting having looked up the details of the judging process, since I can do absolutely nothing but wait, impotently, until it's over.

Amusingly enough, Henry appears to have found out through an online betting service e-mailing to offer him 33 to 1 odds on me winning.