Dear Readers of Pitching the World,
This is my hundredth post. Shouldn’t I be getting a telegram from the Queen or something? How does it work? A hundred posts. What on earth have I been writing about? I remember something about beetroot and something else about pie charts and I’m pretty sure I’ve even been including pitches recently, but other than that my mind’s a blank. Well, perhaps not a blank exactly, more a slaughterhouse. Or a malignant cartoon. Yeah, that’s more like it: Malignant Cartoon Slaughterhouse Mind – that could be my new nickname.
Anyway, I’ve had a little ditty going through my (slaughterhouse/malignant cartoon) mind all day to the tune of Happy Birthday. It goes:
Congratulations to me,
Congratulations to me,
For being such a fucking idiot,
Congratulations to me!
Good, isn’t it? And good, aren’t I? One hundred posts! Crikey. I always thought I’d write a hundred posts and end this nonsense there and then, but as I wrote post number 87 or 94 or even 99 I thought ‘How ridiculous I once was – to believe I would only write 100 posts. What a fool. I’m going to write way more than 100 posts. I might write 200. Or a thousand.”
Well. Well well well. I’m beginning to think that my original thinking was on the money and my subsequent thinking far sloppier. This, I fear, could be my final post. I’ve had enough. Enough of being a writer or a journalist or whatever the hell it is I’ve turned into and I am on the verge of quitting. The reasons are too numerous and complicated to go into, but let it be known that I’ve had enough. Enough enough enough.
You know what the worst word in the English language is? Hope. I’ve had it with hope. Me and hope used to be pals; I used to take hope round the back of supermarkets and have sex with it in big bins. That’s what I do with my friends by the way: fuck them in bins. But not anymore – the hope stuff I mean. Every week I think this week’s going to be better. This week, I think, the man who once paid me £3 a word is going to get in touch and ask me – beg me – to write his autobiography. Or: this week my agent, Matthew Hamilton of Aitken Alexander Associates, is going to get in touch and say, “Look, Steven, the reason I haven’t been in touch is because I’ve been working on a book deal for you. A secret one. And it’s big. Oh it’s big, it’s fuck-the-publishers-in-the-ass big.” Or: this week I’m going to be whisked off somewhere exotic with my ex-election team to write award-winning and morally affirming political speeches. Or: something else, something equally good.
God, what a melodramatic fool I am. But better a melodramatic fool than a hopeful one. Because, you know, this week isn’t going to be any better. If anything, this week will be worse – much worse. My whole life has been spent thinking that this week is going to be better and it never is. In fact, that’s going to be my epitaph – on my gravestone: “Here lies Pitching the World. He thought this week would be better.”
Someone once told me that “To get out of hell you’ve got to use power” and so I’ve decided that I’ve got just about enough energy for one final push. One final push then I’m giving up and going back to painting houses and building walls for a living. The rest of this week will be spent pitching editors with ideas for features that I actually want to write. I’m going to make them the most well honed and attractive pitches ever created and when editors read them they’re going to feel all oily and do remarkable things in their undercrackers.
At least I hope they will. And if that doesn’t work – if I get nowhere trying to make editors all oily or if I get nowhere with my massive fuck-them-in-the-ass secret book deal – then I’m going to put this advert in Private Eye, assuming I can find the money to do so:
Ex political speechwriter and current journalist seeks adventure. Anything legal or otherwise considered. Discretion assured.
Fruity isn’t it? I’ve no idea what it means. I think whatever it means I mean it though. And if THAT doesn’t work (and it clearly will) then I’m either going to go back to painting and building walls for a living or I’m going to get a National Express coach to Paris for £25 and just hang around and try and find my own adventure. I don’t know what I’ll do for money. I’ve thought as far as dancing like a bear in a square somewhere. I know, I know: I’m having a breakdown.
So, you know, if it doesn’t all work out one way or another this week and I do give up and end up dancing around Europe like a bear, I’d just like to say thank you. Thank you for reading and commenting and subscribing and generally making me feel better about stuff. It’s been emotional. And perhaps a little too melodramatic.
Pitching the World. X
Pitching the World 