Lionel Shriver, who won last year’s Orange Prize for her novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, has written an open letter to this year’s longlisted authors, warning them about the dizzying publicity and attention that will now transform their lives. (Some of them, anyway; Shriver concedes that some nominees, like Joyce Carol Oates and Zadie Smith, are plenty well known already.) The excerpt below is only one highlight.

“When not blathering about your fascinating book until you yourself secretly begin to hate it, and reading the same passages aloud until they ring in your head with a mocking sing-song, you will be writing essays like this for the Guardian.

“Moreover, you will be asked to comment as an authority on subjects you know nothing about. I for one have been undeterred from swanning about from BBC Breakfast to Radio 4 as an expert on motherhood just because I do not happen to have any children.

“A cluttered diary easily crowds out working on your next novel, and therefore translates into you unwittingly becoming a fraud. Alarm bells should start to sound when you realise that you now spend more time talking about your fiction than writing it.”

Related links:
Click here for Lionel Shriver’s essay in The Guardian