Novelist Rachel Joyce is author of the international bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, with over 4 million copies sold worldwide; it’s now a major new film due for release in 2022. After a number of years as Chair of Judges for the David Vaisey Prize, Rachel stood down due to pressure of work; however, she generously continued to serve as a judge in 2021. Shortly before learning she’d been awarded this year’s £10,000 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize for her ‘joyously humorous’ novel Miss Benson’s Beetle, she spoke to The Vaisey Trust’s Sarah Smyth and lifted the lid on her love of libraries and how they’ve inspired her work.

What role have libraries played in your life?

As a child going to the library in West Norwood was part of our weekly routine. I really loved the extravagance of being able to choose six books – what I still find very exciting about the library that you can go in, not know what you’re going to come away with and there’s always a sense of discovery. I really believe in that process of borrowing, recycling, community and human connection. Those librarians at West Norwood library recommended books and, I suppose, in a way shaped who I became as a writer by giving me the chance to explore authors I might not have found for myself.

Can you tell us what you’re working on at the moment?

I’ve been working throughout lockdown, and for many years before that, on the screenplay for my first book The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. So that started filming last month in Devon with Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton directed by Hettie Macdonald (a director of the BBC’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People). This autumn it’s filming in Gloucestershire so watch out for Jim Broadbent – and a film crew – at the side of the road!

What’s it really like having your book translated onto the big screen?

Well I was completely involved because I’ve written the screenplay. So I’ve been working very closely with the director. You have a choice. You can either get involved or you can sign it over and then you really never hear about it again. My background is radio drama, so dialogue is my home. To begin with I wasn’t sure about doing it and then a couple of years later I thought, actually I should agree to do it. But it’s a very, very long process. It’s like writing a book, you just have to try everything many, many times, and then you find the way that you should say it.

How do you create the characters and plots for your books?

Writers are like magpies – and that’s a nice way of putting it – we’re thieves and vagabonds! We steal everything that we see, especially when we’re working on something. Everything that you hear, you witness or you glimpse can give you an idea. Life throws a lot at you and you take your characters from anything – it could be in the library or it could be on a bus. It’s when you’re away from your desk, that’s when things often come to you, often extra ideas. So I’m both very much influenced by what I see and I’m always on the lookout – it could be someone’s name, the bag they’re carrying, the way they’re walking. It’s the tiniest of details and you think, oh that’s interesting, I could borrow that. In fact it was a member of the team at Nailsworth Library who inspired the name for the character Daphne Ginger, in my latest novel Miss Benson’s Beetle, and was kind enough to let me use it.

What or who has helped shape you as a writer?

I think I can honestly say it was librarians. They helped me to become a writer simply by their generosity and by not turning me away. I worked my way through the entire classical music department at West Norwood Library. I didn’t know anything about classical music. I borrowed records every week and I discovered what I liked and who different composers were. So that’s a whole other side of libraries I think people sometimes forget – that it’s not just about books. My love of classical music, I would say, was completely self-discovered with the help of the library. And the school librarians who guided me in the books that I read also shaped me – I think a physical relationship with a book is incredibly important, and also a human relationship with someone who you can ask. They may not know the answer but the library is somewhere important to point you in the right direction and to trust that they’ll be trying to provide you with accurate information. Something that is now more important than ever in a digital world.

Do you have any advice for people who might want to become writers?

You’ve got to give yourself the time and the permission to write. You’ve got to commit to it in the same way an athlete would commit to their sport. You don’t just do it once and then it’s done. You have to keep going back to it every day. You have to keep reading, because it is only by reading that you realise what you like, what you don’t like, and you begin to realise the things that other writers do that you admire. So you just keep learning from reading. And I think most of all that if you really want to write you have to take yourself there. You have to allow yourself to take yourself seriously as a writer because nobody else can really do that for you. If you do that, you’re on the right path.

Which books might you make a beeline for at the library to borrow right now?

Over winter, especially over Christmas, I love to read something thick and heavy that I haven’t read before, or reread the classics whether that’s another Thomas Hardy, a Dickens or a return to George Eliot. I think that’s very rewarding in the winter. I’ve just read Olga by Bernhard Schlink over the summer which I really loved. I often get sent books in advance and I’ve just finished Elizabeth Strout’s new novel Oh William! which I’d really recommend.

Why did you to become a judge for the Vaisey Prize?

I suppose simply because I love libraries. I really didn’t know how much work was going on and all the different projects being run. Actually, the more I got involved with the prize the more I saw just how much work people were doing to keep our libraries going. The prize led me to become a volunteer at one of my local libraries in Nailsworth and I was really struck by how, under the roof of books, libraries are also providing a service that is all about community, and providing a vital space for people to connect and talk.

Have there been any library projects which have really inspired you?

They’ve all inspired me – the variety, the inventiveness but most of all the hard work and commitment of the library staff and volunteers to create opportunities to welcome people into their libraries for projects large or small. The Little Libraries project run by the North Cotswold Libraries, which won the Vaisey Prize in 2019, really impressed me by providing small wooden libraries in the shape of houses offering brand new books free to food bank users. The libraries were beautifully crafted by the Men in Sheds volunteer group and really showed the role libraries now play outside their traditional buildings which two years on is more relevant than ever.

And finally, how can we each best support libraries in the future?

I feel that the Prize is so important because it’s recognising a service that is vital in so many unseen ways. If you were brought up on libraries, as a lot of us were, then we really have to support them because otherwise we’re going to lose them. I think it’s really vital that people renew their library cards. The sheer act of getting a card and using your library, wherever you are, is actually a means of supporting the libraries in one of the simplest and most powerful ways. Lovers of libraries have to really think about how much they want them and what they can do to support them – and renewing your library card is just such an easy way to start off.