Deadlines are there to be broken. All writers know that. My favourite quote about deadlines is from the writer Douglas Adams, notorious for virtually faxing his books to his publisher page by page while the printing presses stood ready and waiting. ‘I like deadlines,' he reputedly said, ‘I like listening to the whooshing sound they make as they fly past.'
When you judge the Man Booker Prize, the deadline is inexorable. On Tuesday 14th October, we have to make an informed choice, having read all the entries. Like most people with freelance careers, I'm a big fan of advance planning. There's nothing I enjoy more than flicking through my diary and making notes in it about how many weeks of the year are left - putting lines through the ones when my kids are on their school holidays, writing ‘NOVEL????' in the ones when I think I might be able to get some work done on my book. After I've done that, I feel like I've almost done the work already and it's time for a coffee. So this morning, I leafed through the fancy red moleskine that a friend gave me for Christmas, and worked out that, school holidays included, I have just over 30 weeks of judging the prize. Oodles of time, I thought. Then I thought about the (roughly) 120 books we will have to judge. Even my rudimentary maths skills can work out that's four books a week. Except we don't have 30 weeks to read them all because the longlist meeting is in July, which means... at this point, I stopped doing the maths. I had come over a little faint.
Up until now, it's been a breeze. As our chair of judges said in his blog, there are certain books we already know will be entered - previous winners and anyone who has been shortlisted in the last ten years - so (with apologies for the mixed metaphor) a few big guns are already under our belts. In addition, other entries have started to trickle in, mostly from the small presses who seem to be the only publishers with the good sense to enter books early. This has created the illusion that trickling is what the entries will do, whearas once the official deadline for entries is passed, the trickle will turn into a flood. I look forward to the whooshing sound
Despite some nervousness as this date (April 1st) approaches, we seem to be a pretty cheerful bunch. We had a very pleasant dinner before Christmas. We joked along with each other nicely at the judges' photocall in January. ‘You must be very pleased we all get on so well,' I said to Michael. ‘Ask me again in October,' he replied.
Add a comment