Daily Mail First Novel Award winner Jane Davis talks to Between the Lines about her reaction to winning the award.
My Reaction to Winning the Daily Mail First Novel Award
Even with hard graft, luck always plays a significant role in life. In June 2008, I attended the Winchester Writers’ Conference on the recommendation of my agent, Teresa Chris. It was a stroke of luck that I chose a lecture hosted by Transworld and Jack Sheffield, author of Teacher, Teacher! It was there that I learned about the Daily Mail First Novel Award, only two days before the closing date for entries. On the closing date itself, I wrapped a copy of my manuscript in brown paper and carried it to the post office, praying that the deadline would be flexible. My real incentive for entering was not the thought of winning; it was the promise that all entries would be read. In common with most unpublished writers, I have struggled to find professionals who were prepared to read my writing.
Earlier that month, frustrated, I had handed my notice in at work. It was a job I had been doing since the age of eighteen. I was one of the lucky ones. I had joined a small company that I could grow with and a boss who looked beyond formal qualifications and focused on ability. The previous November, I had been promoted to the position of deputy managing director. But the truth is that we don’t always wish for the things that make us happy.
In the past, I have always dreaded meeting new people. It is only a matter of time before someone looks at you meaningfully and asks, “And what do you do?” I have never thought that my job as an insurance broker said much about who I am. My brother-in-law (a naval architect no less) worked out how to deal with this nonsense a long time ago. He describes himself as a biscuit designer and, if pressed, he tells his assailant that he designed the Hovis digestive. And then he modestly accepts all of the praise that follows.
My plan on leaving my job was to give myself a two-year sabbatical, with the challenge of trying to get my work published.
I had started to write at the age of 35. Although I was in need of a creative outlet, I also wanted to work through my feelings about something that had happened in my life that I was having difficulty making sense of. At the age of 17, a friend was killed when he tried to stop a group of gatecrashers at a party. In the summer of 2000, I went to the christening of a friend’s baby at the same Catholic Church that I had attended as a child. Sitting in the pew in from of me was the man who had served time for the manslaughter of my friend, with his wife and four children. Laughing. Respectable. Alive.
In the short space of time, I went from not knowing if I had anything to write about to not being able to stop writing.
The timing of Transworld’s announcement was absolutely perfect. I had already been notified that my novel had been short-listed in the final six, but I hadn’t wanted to build my hopes up too much. A month after leaving my job, the honeymoon period was well and truly over. I am not one of life’s natural risk-takers. I like security and monthly pay packets and I have a healthy fear of poverty. Every time that I turned on the television there was talk of financial doom and gloom. Full of self-doubt, I began to worry that I had made a foolish mistake.
I received the call from Transworld when I was at home on my own and, because I was alone, I wasn’t quite sure how to react. There was no one to ask, ‘Did that just happen?’ I have always been a bit of a daydreamer. Half an hour later, when I had tried and failed to contact my partner, my mother and various friends by phone, I began to think that I might have imagined it.
Winning the competition is about more than seeing my book in print: it is about validation, about taking risks and about throwing caution to the wind. My hope is that I can be an inspiration to other people to get writing. I don’t have a degree and have never attended a creative writing class. I just had a bit of spare time on my hands, a second-hand laptop, and enough will power to stick at it.
Just in case I should ever get too big for my boots, I have my family to keep me in my rightful place: the middle child of a family of many talented individuals. My sister Anne took great delight in telling me how she announced my win to a group of friends who were distracted by wine glasses and babies:
“Listen up. I have a small announcement to make. My sister has won the Daily Mail new novelist of the year award.”
To which one (male) friend replied in shock, “Your sister won the nude modelist of the year award?”
I have had nothing but support from Transworld and to them I say this: Thank you from the bottom of my heart. The finished book truly is a team effort, of which I am only part.
It may be some time before I have the confidence to call myself a writer, but I am delighted that Joanne Harris has read my work and is kind enough to describe me as one. I feel very proud. But at the same time, I feel very humble.
