VICTORIA GRAINGER CHOSEN AS WINNER OF

THE JACK KEROUAC ONLINE WRITING COMPETITION

SPONSORED BY WATERSTONES

In January 2009 Victoria won a writing competition launched to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication in the UK of Jack Kerouac's novel On The Road. In honour of Kerouac's unique style, the competition entailed writing spontaneously in only TWENTY MINUTES on a topic allocated randomly. This is Victoria's winning entry on the randomly allocated title:

 'A memorable part time job you've held down' ~

'I've always felt like a part timer. Everything I've done has been part time and I don't know if anything can ever be otherwise. I studied for my education part time, I worked part time, part time my mind is on the next piece of part time. And the most memorable? The most memorable piece of a part of time that I can give you here on this A4 selection of fragments of my part time life? It was the roads. I reported for ten years, on the roads. A travel reporter. Not the type of travel that takes you places in a BA lipsticked "thank you for flying" type way. Or suntanned and oily reports from destinations you'll never squeeze in and resorts you can't afford. I was a voice. On the radio. "On the radio?" people used to ask me when they asked what I did. "Actually on the radio?" Yes. ON the radio. Reading the travel news on a national, medium wave talk station for middle-aged white van men. I sat for ten years reading out travel reports, every day. Every afternoon. I even worked on New Year one morning, an empty six am shift where the drive to work had been a dusty, solo one. When I got to work, all I reported on, was, nothing. I was the voice that told of the queues and the hold ups and the cones and the accidents. And when I started, so nervous, with my high-pitched too-fast trembling voice, I didn't think about what I was saying. But as the years rolled on like the cars up and down the grey lanes each and every day, a slow, revving impatience to be somewhere else,  I sat. Everyone going somewhere, even the ones sat shouting at lowered level crossings, and six lane shunts. Everyone going somewhere, but me. Part time, so just the afternoon shift, for ten years that flew. Watching ten seasons change and ten seasons of my life turn and shift, but the voice the same. "M6 south slow, stationary, sluggish, slug-like", trying to find a way to say the same thing in a different way every day. I drive so slowly now you wouldn't believe. I accuse my sixty-seven year old mother of boy-racing because I'm petrified, of cars. Of the roads. The roads I know so well. Quite a party piece, I can name any junction on most motorways. Junction 26 of the M6? Oh that's Standish. M1 Junction 1 is Lutterworth. M8 Junction 20, Glasgow's Kingston Bridge. My life has been motorways, exchanges on air, banter, life, and the bad stuff. People on bridges, jumping onto motorways. Flinging themselves on to train tracks, like suicidal sycamores, just flinging themselves onto motorways and train paths. Press releases, my voice, "Fatality" - the serious incident code word for the tens of kamikaze seed riders I spoke about, knowing some accident my voice sent out meant a house whose colours had gone, changed, never the same again. Banter, press-releases, lives, roads. The laughing when you shouldn't, the accidental coughing fits, the swearing secretly, colleagues in stitches, SaTURDay roadworks, sneaking in words, the voice.   And now the voice moved on. I'm on a road now. I left and I'm the one on the road, moving, driving, fast and free, listening to the others, the voices, and mine, is secret, private. Mine. My voice has given way to my fingers, who no longer release the fragments to ears, but to eyes, to you.

The voice is silent. And it feels louder than before. It's getting louder.'

Jack Kerouac was a lightning typist able to type conversations with great accuracy even as they were occurring. He was also nicknamed 'Memory Babe' because of his ability to recall events in detail, with a spontaneity and verve learned from his deep love of the way jazz musicians could improvise freely on any given theme. His writing sought to become a 'spontaneous bop prosody'. As he put it, "You must write exactly as everything rushes into your head, and AT ONCE!" He wanted to create something like a continuous chain of undisciplined thought, presenting the events on several different levels at once.

The Kerouac award recognised Victoria's ability to create compelling, powerful and moving prose, straight onto the page in a short space of time. With no prior knowledge of the theme, and an extremely tight time limit, it shows her capability to 'write as everything rushes in', 'improvising freely' on any given subject, with brevity, fluidity, and beauty.