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Thank you to everyone who sent messages of congratulations to Maggie. I've passed them on. People are always intrigued by success, so from my privileged vantage point, I can now offer an insider guide to what you have to do to win the Women’s Prize for fiction. The secret is ...
... that you have to work and work, year in year out, honing your craft, ignoring the fact that for the first decade most reviewers are incapable of praising your books without expressing surprise that a young female writer has written something that isn’t "chick-lit” ...
... then, after that, you have to respond to rave reviews and awards by ignoring them and starting every new book with a determination to produce something better and more ambitious. Everything must be redrafted over and over again, deleting half a manuscript when necessary ...
Every sentence must be polished till it shines. At the point where any ordinary mortal would hand a book in, exhausted, you go back to the beginning and redraft. Then you do it again. ...
Standing firm throughout the whole thing in relationships of compete loyalty, openness and trust with a brilliant editor ( @maryanneharring) and agent ( @victoriajhobbs) is key ...
(Both of them responded to the idea of following up seven hugely successful contemporary novels with a book about the plague death of a forgotten Elizabethan boy with a wholehearted, “Yes! Go for it!”) ...
On top of that, you must harvest inspiration by giving as much energy and passion to your non-writing life as you do to the hours spent at the desk. ...
No social media helps with that, so it’s clear to the people close to you that when you’re working you’re working, and when you’re not you’re not. ...
Also, being born with huge talent and reading several novels a week for forty-odd years helps. That’s it! The secret formula for literary success is revealed! Now you know.
