Tessa Hadley

Saturday

Tessa Hadley

Diary – 17 March 2012

From our UK edition

I’m a cowardly traveller. I’m not afraid of trains, planes, cars — just of change, and of elsewhere. Months ago I agreed to go with my colleagues from Bath Spa University to a conference of creative writing programmes in Chicago. As the time approaches, I resent that past self who said yes: foolishly enthusiastic, deluded about my own character. The prospect of travel makes the days leading up to it feel insubstantial, as if they are only a preparation. I have no interest in Chicago, where I’ve never been. There’s a metaphysical puzzle about time which has gripped me since I was a child — faced, say, with a school morning of maths and double Latin. Why does this moment I’m in have to be now? Why can’t it be then, when the trip is over?

Tuesday

Tessa Hadley

Short stories deserve a prize

From our UK edition

Writers have to be careful of prizes — careful of thinking about them, or not thinking about them. Sitting down to write, one needs one’s head clear of all the apparatus of vanity and status anxiety and self-doubt that may clutter it the rest of the time. No one who’s any good puts words on the page to win prizes: good writers aim at something much bigger and more difficult. And yet prizes do change the literary landscape — they draw writing habits and patterns and fashions inexorably after them. It goes without saying that they are a bit of a blunt instrument: getting it right sometimes, wrong sometimes, not fine-tuned to the taste of every discriminating reader.  But they help sell books, and we all need books sold.