It felt good to be writing in proper notebooks again, and almost as soon as I came home with them they started to fill up. I carried the small one with me everywhere I went and scribbled down everything that came into my head. After my shifts ended I sat for hours in my room with the larger one, writing and revising page after page, often late into the night. At times I was almost possessed; I couldn’t remember when I’d last felt like this. I was writing as if my life depended on it – which, in a way, it did.
I was now paying my respects to Luan Po Tuad twice a day as I had in the old days, once in the morning and then again at night. His original gold chain gone, I would slip him instead into the change pocket of my jeans or the breast pocket of my shirt so that he was always with me. Bearing in mind all that both he and the pendant meant, together with the conclusion of that first prayer in a year, I was no longer writing for the old reasons of money, publication and success, nor even the simple enjoyment of having the ideas and writing about them. If I had been initially unclear why I had been directed back to writing, the answer had at some point become obvious: winning the competition might be my only hope of getting back together with Fon.
I realise that looks ridiculous, if not downright sad, in black and white, but there was a kind of logic to it: I didn’t have a clue where Fon was, and no means of finding out; likewise, she had no idea of my whereabouts – nobody did, in fact, except Mum and Dad, and all they knew was that I was alive somewhere on Skye. Like them, Fon had my email address, but cyberspace was all that now directly connected any of us. A few months before, when I’d first made a real effort to find her, I’d posted a few enquiries on internet message boards and chatrooms she and her old friends used to virtually frequent, and I even briefly engaged a private detective in London to see if he could track her down. But the message boards saw no response, and the detective’s initial enquiries turned up nothing. He offered to keep looking for her but his fees were far more than I could manage. In any case, although I tried not to consider the possibility, by now it seemed likely she’d gone back to Thailand. Short of going there, which I couldn’t afford to do even if it wasn’t a needle-in-a-haystack job, the only way of finding out for sure was to write to the family, but I hadn’t done that. I spoke no Thai, they spoke no English, and above all I felt it wasn’t my place to get them involved in our marital difficulties. I hadn’t even been in touch with them while Fon and I were together, except in the sense of asking Fon to send them my love while she was making one of her rare phone calls home. Her parents were quite a bit older than mine and not in the best of health, and this, together with the far more formal relationship Thais have with their seniors than is usual among British people, there was a strong possibility that she hadn’t even told them we’d split up. So it was best left alone.
Wherever Fon was, my idea was that if I could win a Sankey prize, several things would ensue which even if they didn’t lead to a reconciliation could at least put us back in touch and give us another chance. The main thing was the publicity: while normal writing competitions were never the stuff of front-page news, or even page 94 news come to that, the maverick Sankey – death notwithstanding – was always good for a story, and even if it took a while I felt sure that news of my (still hoped-for) win would eventually filter through to Fon. If I had the chance to say even half a dozen words at the prize-giving ceremony or to the press covering the competition, I’d dedicate the prize to her, or somehow work her name or a secret message into my entry to make doubly sure she knew I was still thinking about her. All she’d have to do to get in touch was send me an email, or if she didn’t have the address any more, she could contact the papers or the Sankey people themselves.
As a method of tracking someone down, it had its weaknesses. Not the least of which was that its success depended firstly on me winning a prize and secondly on Fon being the one to make contact when or if she found out about it... and I wasn’t sure which was the less likely. The ball being entirely in her court, even if I did win I’d still be in the dark until I heard from her, and if I didn’t hear from her, I wouldn’t know whether that was because she hadn’t heard the news or that she had and simply didn’t want to speak to me – and both of those were equally likely. All that gave my idea the edge over the most desperate of fantasies were the prize money and the symbolism of the award itself. My writing and our money, or the lack of both, were the main reasons we’d split up, and although our problems would never be solved simply by my being published and having a bit of cash, they would certainly help.
I was now paying my respects to Luan Po Tuad twice a day as I had in the old days, once in the morning and then again at night. His original gold chain gone, I would slip him instead into the change pocket of my jeans or the breast pocket of my shirt so that he was always with me. Bearing in mind all that both he and the pendant meant, together with the conclusion of that first prayer in a year, I was no longer writing for the old reasons of money, publication and success, nor even the simple enjoyment of having the ideas and writing about them. If I had been initially unclear why I had been directed back to writing, the answer had at some point become obvious: winning the competition might be my only hope of getting back together with Fon.
I realise that looks ridiculous, if not downright sad, in black and white, but there was a kind of logic to it: I didn’t have a clue where Fon was, and no means of finding out; likewise, she had no idea of my whereabouts – nobody did, in fact, except Mum and Dad, and all they knew was that I was alive somewhere on Skye. Like them, Fon had my email address, but cyberspace was all that now directly connected any of us. A few months before, when I’d first made a real effort to find her, I’d posted a few enquiries on internet message boards and chatrooms she and her old friends used to virtually frequent, and I even briefly engaged a private detective in London to see if he could track her down. But the message boards saw no response, and the detective’s initial enquiries turned up nothing. He offered to keep looking for her but his fees were far more than I could manage. In any case, although I tried not to consider the possibility, by now it seemed likely she’d gone back to Thailand. Short of going there, which I couldn’t afford to do even if it wasn’t a needle-in-a-haystack job, the only way of finding out for sure was to write to the family, but I hadn’t done that. I spoke no Thai, they spoke no English, and above all I felt it wasn’t my place to get them involved in our marital difficulties. I hadn’t even been in touch with them while Fon and I were together, except in the sense of asking Fon to send them my love while she was making one of her rare phone calls home. Her parents were quite a bit older than mine and not in the best of health, and this, together with the far more formal relationship Thais have with their seniors than is usual among British people, there was a strong possibility that she hadn’t even told them we’d split up. So it was best left alone.
Wherever Fon was, my idea was that if I could win a Sankey prize, several things would ensue which even if they didn’t lead to a reconciliation could at least put us back in touch and give us another chance. The main thing was the publicity: while normal writing competitions were never the stuff of front-page news, or even page 94 news come to that, the maverick Sankey – death notwithstanding – was always good for a story, and even if it took a while I felt sure that news of my (still hoped-for) win would eventually filter through to Fon. If I had the chance to say even half a dozen words at the prize-giving ceremony or to the press covering the competition, I’d dedicate the prize to her, or somehow work her name or a secret message into my entry to make doubly sure she knew I was still thinking about her. All she’d have to do to get in touch was send me an email, or if she didn’t have the address any more, she could contact the papers or the Sankey people themselves.
As a method of tracking someone down, it had its weaknesses. Not the least of which was that its success depended firstly on me winning a prize and secondly on Fon being the one to make contact when or if she found out about it... and I wasn’t sure which was the less likely. The ball being entirely in her court, even if I did win I’d still be in the dark until I heard from her, and if I didn’t hear from her, I wouldn’t know whether that was because she hadn’t heard the news or that she had and simply didn’t want to speak to me – and both of those were equally likely. All that gave my idea the edge over the most desperate of fantasies were the prize money and the symbolism of the award itself. My writing and our money, or the lack of both, were the main reasons we’d split up, and although our problems would never be solved simply by my being published and having a bit of cash, they would certainly help.
*
All of this must have been some kind of motivation for me to get on with it because within a few weeks I’d finished the two opening chapters and outlines of each of the first two novels I’d had ideas for, and I was working on two more. Admittedly one of these was an old theme that had been haunting me for years and which I’d never exorcised, and even though none of my old pre-Dungarry writing was still around for comparison I knew these ideas were among the best I’d ever had. By my previous standards that might not be saying much, but most people – even Vince, I suspected – recognised a good idea when it came to them; the hard part was in doing justice to it. Fortunately, I was just as happy with how I was expressing the ideas as the ideas themselves.
I did of course only need one good idea to win a prize in the competition, and even though I now had four, there was no way I was going to put all my eggs in one basket just yet. Inspiration to the extent I was experiencing it was rarer than the filling of a Portree steakwich, and when it goes like that, especially after such a period of drought, you quickly learn not to question it, even if it drives you mad. I imagined that when the time came to enter the competition, I’d simply pull out the best one and send it in. I didn’t know which that would be at this point, faithful (not necessarily in a religious sense) that I’d get a ‘sign’ of some sort. I might find, for example, that I was naturally spending more time and effort on one, or that one would take off in an unexpected direction and I’d want to follow it, or I’d take a fancy to a particular character and want to spend all my time with them and their story. Either way, I didn’t anticipate the choice would be that hard.
I did of course only need one good idea to win a prize in the competition, and even though I now had four, there was no way I was going to put all my eggs in one basket just yet. Inspiration to the extent I was experiencing it was rarer than the filling of a Portree steakwich, and when it goes like that, especially after such a period of drought, you quickly learn not to question it, even if it drives you mad. I imagined that when the time came to enter the competition, I’d simply pull out the best one and send it in. I didn’t know which that would be at this point, faithful (not necessarily in a religious sense) that I’d get a ‘sign’ of some sort. I might find, for example, that I was naturally spending more time and effort on one, or that one would take off in an unexpected direction and I’d want to follow it, or I’d take a fancy to a particular character and want to spend all my time with them and their story. Either way, I didn’t anticipate the choice would be that hard.
*
The hostel had a small room on the ground floor with two PCs in it with email and internet access and all the usual software. There was also a good quality printer, and George had installed a scanner and even a webcam, although what he intended to do with that I had no idea. By now I’d looked up the official Sankey competition website and printed off the rules, which were as follows:
(1) Novels will be judged on the strength of the two opening chapters, which together should amount to no more than 2,000 words, and a two-page synopsis of the novel.
(2) Novels need not be completed at the time of entry. (See point 5.)
(3) Subject matter, style and genre of novels are open.
(4) The five successful competitors will each be awarded an initial cash prize of £2,000 and a place on a five-day residential creative writing course. To participate in the course competitors must be available for the first week in June.
(5) The five remaining cash prizes of £8,000 will be awarded to each successful competitor ONLY upon the submission of the finished manuscript, which must:
(a) be completed within six months following the creative writing course;
(b) be no less than 250 pages and no more than 350 pages in length;
(c) be deemed by the judges to be of a standard commensurate with that of the initial winning chapters and synopsis.
(6) Only one entry per person admitted. No entrant may win more than one prize.
(7) Copyright in all submissions remains with the entrants.
(8) The judges will be novelist and former Sankey Prize winner Rebecca Burgess, the critic Simon Glasses and Leonard Sankey’s widow Edna Sankey.
At first glance, 2,000 words – about ten pages – for the first two chapters and the page limit for the whole thing seemed to suggest that the new Sankey prize was designed to encourage little more than crude bestsellers, and was thus likely to be dismissed by critics as commercialised and unimaginative. But otherwise the world was your oyster, and in any case, none of this meant the books couldn’t be good, as Sankey’s own marriage of popular and critical success had shown. Certainly, by comparison with most of the writing contests I’d entered over the years, the rules were extremely generous, and for once in my life none of the ideas I’d had for the competition would have any trouble fitting into the restrictions given.
The closing date for entries was now less than a month away, but I didn’t want to rush: I needed as much time as possible to see which of the ideas I had was the best one. The way I’d always approached writing competitions was either desperate or simply narcissistic (unless that’s the same thing) – to wait until the last possible moment before sending in my entry, on the basis that however good (or bad) my idea and however well (or badly) I might have written it thus far, there was always a chance I might be struck by a bolt of genius at the last minute which would make all the difference between an unconditional winner and an anonymous loser. This had never actually happened, I should add – the strategy was, I suspect, more a psychological last refuge to which scoundrels like me cling – but I had nothing to lose by doing it, and if nothing else the extra pressure of time added an element of drama to my otherwise drab existence.
No new ideas for novels came to me after this point, but I was hardly complaining: I had more choice than I had a right to hope for, and it also allowed me to devote all my creative energies to perfecting the required opening chapters and outlines of all four novels. It was quiet in the hostel, just a few French girls and a Japanese couple, so I had plenty of time to sit in the PC room and type up each potential entry on the word processor.
However, none of them seemed to be choosing themselves in quite the way I’d anticipated, so when I’d printed them all out I put them away and gave myself a week’s rest from the whole business – I didn’t even touch the pocket notebook – before sitting down to read them as objectively as possible one morning over a cup of coffee.
And this is when the trouble started. The Sankey trouble, I mean.
To my delight, they all read really well; I was extremely pleased with what I’d written and how I’d outlined each of the novels. I would have been more than happy to have written just one of them – any one of them. But that was the problem. To my horror, none of the ideas seemed any better or worse than the others: not one leapt out at me as the perfect candidate. They were all equal contenders. If they’d been boxers, they would either have knocked each other out the moment the first bell went or gone fifteen rounds before the referee called it a draw. I mean, it was a nice problem to have – as Oscar Wilde might have said, to write one decent competition entry might be considered good going, but to manage it four times was starting to look like witchcraft. Even so, given that there was now only a week before the closing date – I was beginning to wish I hadn’t left it so late after all – it was a problem all the same. I couldn’t even choose one on a sentimental basis; they were all my creations, and I loved them equally. Which I suppose is sentimental – in which case what I should say is I couldn’t choose one on an unsentimental basis. Look, I just couldn’t choose one on any bloody basis, all right?
I’m aware all this sounds egocentric in the extreme, but I honestly don’t mean it that way; it was simply how it came across to me at the time – and in any case, the extraordinary events which followed bore out those feelings. I wasn’t to know that then, of course, so I resorted to my usual approach when faced with such dilemmas by going for a long walk in the hills, smoking a lot of cigarettes and praying to Luan Po Tuad.
The conclusion I came to was that what I perceived as genius was probably no more than sheer relief that I could still write anything at all after barely picking up a pen in a year, and in any case, the most important thing for me to realise was that so far I was the sole judge of what I’d written. The only thing for it was an adult dose of objectivity. Time, the great healer, was usually the best thing for that, but by now time was what I didn’t have; the next best thing was a good friend.
(1) Novels will be judged on the strength of the two opening chapters, which together should amount to no more than 2,000 words, and a two-page synopsis of the novel.
(2) Novels need not be completed at the time of entry. (See point 5.)
(3) Subject matter, style and genre of novels are open.
(4) The five successful competitors will each be awarded an initial cash prize of £2,000 and a place on a five-day residential creative writing course. To participate in the course competitors must be available for the first week in June.
(5) The five remaining cash prizes of £8,000 will be awarded to each successful competitor ONLY upon the submission of the finished manuscript, which must:
(a) be completed within six months following the creative writing course;
(b) be no less than 250 pages and no more than 350 pages in length;
(c) be deemed by the judges to be of a standard commensurate with that of the initial winning chapters and synopsis.
(6) Only one entry per person admitted. No entrant may win more than one prize.
(7) Copyright in all submissions remains with the entrants.
(8) The judges will be novelist and former Sankey Prize winner Rebecca Burgess, the critic Simon Glasses and Leonard Sankey’s widow Edna Sankey.
At first glance, 2,000 words – about ten pages – for the first two chapters and the page limit for the whole thing seemed to suggest that the new Sankey prize was designed to encourage little more than crude bestsellers, and was thus likely to be dismissed by critics as commercialised and unimaginative. But otherwise the world was your oyster, and in any case, none of this meant the books couldn’t be good, as Sankey’s own marriage of popular and critical success had shown. Certainly, by comparison with most of the writing contests I’d entered over the years, the rules were extremely generous, and for once in my life none of the ideas I’d had for the competition would have any trouble fitting into the restrictions given.
The closing date for entries was now less than a month away, but I didn’t want to rush: I needed as much time as possible to see which of the ideas I had was the best one. The way I’d always approached writing competitions was either desperate or simply narcissistic (unless that’s the same thing) – to wait until the last possible moment before sending in my entry, on the basis that however good (or bad) my idea and however well (or badly) I might have written it thus far, there was always a chance I might be struck by a bolt of genius at the last minute which would make all the difference between an unconditional winner and an anonymous loser. This had never actually happened, I should add – the strategy was, I suspect, more a psychological last refuge to which scoundrels like me cling – but I had nothing to lose by doing it, and if nothing else the extra pressure of time added an element of drama to my otherwise drab existence.
No new ideas for novels came to me after this point, but I was hardly complaining: I had more choice than I had a right to hope for, and it also allowed me to devote all my creative energies to perfecting the required opening chapters and outlines of all four novels. It was quiet in the hostel, just a few French girls and a Japanese couple, so I had plenty of time to sit in the PC room and type up each potential entry on the word processor.
However, none of them seemed to be choosing themselves in quite the way I’d anticipated, so when I’d printed them all out I put them away and gave myself a week’s rest from the whole business – I didn’t even touch the pocket notebook – before sitting down to read them as objectively as possible one morning over a cup of coffee.
And this is when the trouble started. The Sankey trouble, I mean.
To my delight, they all read really well; I was extremely pleased with what I’d written and how I’d outlined each of the novels. I would have been more than happy to have written just one of them – any one of them. But that was the problem. To my horror, none of the ideas seemed any better or worse than the others: not one leapt out at me as the perfect candidate. They were all equal contenders. If they’d been boxers, they would either have knocked each other out the moment the first bell went or gone fifteen rounds before the referee called it a draw. I mean, it was a nice problem to have – as Oscar Wilde might have said, to write one decent competition entry might be considered good going, but to manage it four times was starting to look like witchcraft. Even so, given that there was now only a week before the closing date – I was beginning to wish I hadn’t left it so late after all – it was a problem all the same. I couldn’t even choose one on a sentimental basis; they were all my creations, and I loved them equally. Which I suppose is sentimental – in which case what I should say is I couldn’t choose one on an unsentimental basis. Look, I just couldn’t choose one on any bloody basis, all right?
I’m aware all this sounds egocentric in the extreme, but I honestly don’t mean it that way; it was simply how it came across to me at the time – and in any case, the extraordinary events which followed bore out those feelings. I wasn’t to know that then, of course, so I resorted to my usual approach when faced with such dilemmas by going for a long walk in the hills, smoking a lot of cigarettes and praying to Luan Po Tuad.
The conclusion I came to was that what I perceived as genius was probably no more than sheer relief that I could still write anything at all after barely picking up a pen in a year, and in any case, the most important thing for me to realise was that so far I was the sole judge of what I’d written. The only thing for it was an adult dose of objectivity. Time, the great healer, was usually the best thing for that, but by now time was what I didn’t have; the next best thing was a good friend.
