Bookworm

Published on Thursday 2 July 2009 15:34

SIR MAGNUS REGRETS

I WASN'T paying too much attention when the Queen's Birthday Honours List was published last month, so I didn't know about former Scotsman editor Magnus Linklater's knighthood. But when Dundee's Lord Provost John Letford introduced Sir Magnus Linklater as chairman of the judges at the awards ceremony for the Dundee International Books Prize last weekend, I was delighted that justice had finally been done.

Unfortunately, as Sir Magnus politely noted before announcing the winner of the 10,000 prize, while it was gratifying to be so honoured by the Lord Provost, nobody had yet told Buckingham Palace about his new title.

EDITORS WANTED

WHEN however, he is finally honoured by the Palace for services to journalism/the arts/history/Scotland, Sir Magnus's citation should mention that he's got quite a strong line in honesty.

While most literary prize judges bang on about the high standards of the entries, Linklater bluntly pointed out that most of the shortlist for the Dundee award – Britain's biggest for an unpublished writer – were badly in need of an editor.

He's undoubtedly right. All the novels I've ever read that have escaped the attention of an editor's blue pencil have been hopelessly self-indulgent and unfocused. The Catch-22 would-be writers face is that they really need to persuade an editor to look at their manuscript before it's finished – the very stage at which most editors don't want to become involved.

The website YouWriteOn. com is one of the few free ways in which to clear this hurdle. Editors from both Random House and Orion now review the top ten stories submitted to the site each month and pick out the best for publication. This summer, novels by four writers whose work has benefited from this process will be published by the bigger London publishers – including The Scotsman's assistant editor Douglas Jackson, whose second novel Claudius is launched by Bantam Press next week.

HARE TOMORROW

FINALLY, congratulations to the hugely talented Catherine Rayner, still only a few years out of Edinburgh College of Art but now with the world at her feet after winning the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal, Britain's most prestigious award for children's book illustration, for her book Harris Finds His Feet, about a leveret learning about the joys of growing up.