Oh dear. It turns out that I’m back in Boscombe. That in itself isn’t too bad. I have a lot of family here. I have friends here. There’s a big beach here. But there’s also my copy of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook here. There’s a lot wrong with that. Firstly, after a three and a half month hiatus, it continues to mock and humiliate me. Secondly, it means that I have to flick through it and pitch. I hate having to flick through it and pitch. Once this fuckhead of a project is over (2013? 2049?) I’m never going to flick through something and pitch ever again.
Still, persistence. Dogged, ill-judged, character-weakening persistence. This morning, I thought that I’d persist with the G’s. The G’s looked an approachable, relatively untapped bunch. Sure, I’d pitched Grazia (and been ignored) and Greetings Today (who didn’t ignore me, but then did) but other than that, the G’s had always seemed untouched and promising.
A mistake. Never think that anything is either untouched or promising. Nothing is ever untouched or promising. The G’s are hard. Here are some G’s.
1. Go Girl Magazine. According to the blurb, this is a ‘Magazine for 7-11-year-old girls including fashion, beauty, celebrity news and gossip.’ I don’t know anything about fashion, beauty or celebrity news for 7-11-year-old girls. I’m not prepared to find out. I’m not prepared to walk around the streets of Boscombe asking seven-year-old girls where they got their jeans from or if there’s any good gossip going around at school that I should be writing a feature about. Go Girl Magazine is a non-starter. For now.
2. GQ. I used to buy GQ five or six times a year. Now I buy it no times a year. Recently, I somehow ended up reading an issue and it seemed to consist of the smuggest writers in the world writing about the most boring things in the world. In the fashion pages, there were a few pictures of men in expensive coats looking demented. That was it. They pay well though.
3. Green Pebble. Green Pebble is a ‘Magazine dedicated to contemporary visual arts in East Anglia.’ I can’t think of anything to say about this.
4. Grow Your Own. This is a publication for ‘kitchen gardeners of all levels of expertise.’ At first, this seemed promising. And interesting: kitchen gardeners. But then I realised that I don’t have a kitchen. And not only that, but it looks like I will never have a kitchen. This is a shame. If some quirk of fate led to me one day having a kitchen, I would definitely plant loads of stuff in there and write about it.
5. Guitarist. ‘Aims to improve readers’ knowledge of the instrument, help them make the right buying choices and assist them in becoming a better player.’ Although I have a better chance of one day owning a guitar than I do a kitchen, I have never owned one previously and certainly have very little knowledge of the instrument and no idea how to turn a bad guitar player into a good guitar player. At a push, I could perhaps squeeze out a few hundred words on buying one, but it would primarily consist of, “Make sure it looks cool, make sure it looks cool, whatever you do just make sure it looks fucking cool. Buy one of those ones that is one guitar on top of the other as they’re well cool,” and I don’t think the people over at Guitarist would go for that.
You might think that, as I haven’t threatened to quit since June, that I would do so right about there. You’d be wrong. Some of the G’s are actually okay, and I’m planning on spending the rest of the evening cooking up ideas for Granta, Glamour, The Good Book Guide and Golf Monthly. My next post could well be about this, if things go well. If things go badly, my next post will be about trying to explain to a policeman why I’d been walking around town trying to find out where the local seven-year-olds got their jeans from.
Pitching the World 