Pitching the World

It’s been a long time. During this long time I’ve done my best not to go broke (I’ve failed at this), mad (failed), bald (failed) and generally not become too dispirited (failed). I’ve also been trying to get a book deal (not a failure yet, but it will be) about the life of a freelance journalist. The book will be loosely based on Pitching the World, which in turn is loosely based on my life as a (failing/failed) freelance journalist. It’s about a writer trying to pitch 642 magazines (with hilarious consequences), and although it may never see the light of day – may not get written, even – I’ve given myself a chance.

The traditional approach to getting an agent to represent your book or a publisher to publish it go roughly like this: you write a few sample chapters and a synopsis of your book, send said sample chapters and synopsis off to an agent/publisher, wait and get all heady thinking you’re going to get published, wait some more, get a bit down, get a generic rejection letter. 

Such an approach doesn’t fly with pitchingtheworld. For a start, the mental paralysis of ‘damn, I’ve got work to do’/’damn, I haven’t got work to do’ has rendered me incapable of sitting down and having the clarity to write three chapters. And a synopsis. Second, I couldn’t take waiting too long. When I had a stab at writing a novel in my early twenties I went through the process outlined in the above paragraph and found the waiting – much like the novel I had written – unbearable. Third, I just don’t like such a typical approach. Pitching the World is, if anything (and it could well not be anything: it could be nothing), about taking an unusual approach to becoming published. 

‘And what is this unusual approach?’ I hear you cry. Well, that will have to wait until next time. ‘And when is the next time?’ I don’t hear you cry. Soon. Maybe tomorrow. I will say though, that this unorthodox approach has not only set up a (kind of) meeting with an agent next week, it’s a (kind of) meeting that will last for two days. And no, the unorthodox approach doesn’t involve threats, crying, kidnap or mind altering drugs.

Finally. After weeks of broken promises and inertia on my part regarding the pie charts, they are finally here. In truth, they’re not really up to much. I got a bit carried away earlier this afternoon after hearing from my previous employers that they’ve very generously – and graciously – allowed me to keep the computer that I half-stole from them. Inspired by this and as a way of becoming more familiar with some of the programs on my new computer, I set about creating some pie charts that I hoped would give an indication of my progress so far. 

Here is the first one:

Now, you’ll see that there are some problems with this. I’m not particularly happy with the visual aspect, and it doesn’t really tell the Pitching the World reader very much at all. Or perhaps it does. Perhaps it brilliantly sums up my attempts so far and the quality of this blog in general. In case you’re wondering, the “Maga” part in the key was me halfway through writing “Magazines”. I thought the key on the side might explain what the segments related to, but halfway through writing “Magazines” I realised that a pie chart might not be the best way to record my progress so far. So I gave up.

But I didn’t give up for very long. It occurred to me that a large chunk of my readership had been looking forward to these pie charts for some time and I didn’t want to let them down.

So I gave it another go:

I felt that my second attempt at a pie chart conquered the colouring in of the segments quite effectively, but overall it lacked the edginess and character of my first attempt. Plus, I didn’t even begin to attempt some sort of key, which suggests, to me at least, that my enthusiasm for displaying my progress in the form of pie charts was waning. 

Perhaps, then, there is a better way of charting the Pitching the World experiment. I’ll get thinking. There will definitely be a progress report shortly as I’m compiling a load of information for a 2,000 word piece I’m writing for the British Journalism Review. It has to be filed by the weekend. If they’re unfortunate enough to stumble upon this post, they may rescind the commission. So, please, don’t tell them about the above. Thanks.

Okay, a better writer might have titled this post “Pitching the Cat World”, but I’m not that gifted. Or that corny. Actually, I am that corny. But, yes, Cat World is being pitched today. In the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook (which continues to haunt me) I’ve written something next to the “Cat World” entry. I’ve written “Mice”. Good, isn’t it? Although in actual fact I haven’t just written “Mice”. If I had just written “Mice” I might be in with a chance of pitching something worthwhile. It could be that I knew something about mice and their relationship with those in the cat world that few other people did, and I could have pitched something to “Cat World” about some cutting edge mouse research that could have made an interesting article. Perhaps.

But I didn’t just write “Mice”. I wrote “Mice?”. As if the idea of writing something, anything, about mice for “Cat World” was a good one and warranted writing down “Mice?” next to the “Cat World” entry in the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook. This was two months ago and I can’t say that my thinking has improved since then. Indeed, a few moments ago I was idly flipping through the W&A etc. (I say “idly flipping through” yet I was nowhere near as cool as I make out. I was going through it in a panic, wondering where my next bit of beetroot was coming from), noticed the “Cat World” entry and my spirit was immediately lifted by seeing “Mice?” next to “Cat World”. This could be something, I thought, this must have been an idea I’d had sometime ago about mice that could fit in “Cat World”. Alas, it wasn’t. I wracked my brain and remembered writing “Mice?” sometime ago and seem to remember that was all I had thought at the time. Just “Mice?”, no more.

Pitching the World is four months old and I’d be astonished if it reaches its five month anniversary. Still, I’ll keep plugging away for at least a couple more weeks. Tomorrow: Dog World.

Today my four line wonder invaded seven countries: the Country Gentleman’s Association, Country Homes and Interiors, Country Life, Country Living, Country Smallholding, Country Walking and Countryman. In case you’re not up to speed and wondering what the hell “my four line wonder” is, then I suggest you read yesterday’s post. If you’re not up to speed and wondering if this blog gets any good: it doesn’t.

So far, only one of the countries has replied, saying that they were “always interested interested in new writers, particularly of your pedigree”. Pitchingtheworld didn’t know that he had pedigree. Out of yesterday’s batch they’ve pretty much all replied and apart from one of the kindest rejections I’ve ever received, they’ve all said that they have the budget to hire freelancers and have encouraged me to pitch more thoroughly. Because of the varying nature of the magazines – on diving, architecture, climbing, snooker, insurance etc. – I feel on the verge of cracking what I set out to do with this project when it started in late September. I think what I set out to do (I was a little heady at the time) was get published in more (and more esoteric) magazines than anyone else in the country. I also wanted to keep occupied. And learn stuff. And perhaps say something about the state of journalism. Perhaps I’m starting to do all of these things. And perhaps the state of journalism isn’t as bleak as many people seem to think it is. If one four line email (a four line wonder, if you like) sent to ten magazines can provoke eight promising leads and a relationship, however slight, with eight different editors then the future might not be so bad.

Of course the future will be so bad. The above post is quite poorly written and if I’ve ever had any writing skills then they’re clearly evaporating. It seems to be the pitchingtheworld way: get yourself into a spectacular position, and then spectacularly flap it up. Oh well.

Getting motivated can be tough. You’ve seen me, you know what I’m about. I’m about dodging work and saying I’m going to do certain things and not doing them and generally not having the motivation or skills to see this project through. But I’ve undergone a bit of a sea change in my thinking and, if you had seen me earlier today, you would have seen me craft a four sentence long letter that has been sent (so far) to eight magazines. These magazines included Horse & Hound, Hortus, Housebuilder, Diver Magazine, Electrical Review and Snooker Scene. Out of the eight, two emails didn’t reach their targets, but out of the remaining six, two eds have already replied saying that they like the look of me, encouraging me to pitch more fully and giving one or two writer’s guidelines. 

God, what an arresting opening paragraph. I may well be the new Boz. But, I do have a point to make. The point, is that this morning has given me a fair amount of encouragement: if I send off my four sentence long email to another 100 places, I can expect a success rate of around 25% – perhaps a bit more. “Success rate” in this instance, meaning opening up new markets that I could potentially write for. This sliver of encouragement has also made me see the industry in a fresh light: there is a lot of work out there and some of it pays pretty well (one of the six publications is talking about 40p a word), but you have to hunt for it, and you have to be able to write a killer four sentence email. 

Now watch as I send this “killer” email to another 100 places and I’m either ignored or told to go and do something to myself. By that, I mean told to go fuck myself, but you probably didn’t need the clarification.

Now, yesterday when I said: “I’ll also be updating my progress daily (possibly twice daily – actually no way) from now on. This shit just got real” I meant it as a joke. Okay, I didn’t really, but in retrospect it seems a little hasty. For example, it’s now about 20 minutes away from the end of the day and I haven’t felt inclined to update anything, as there’s precious little to update. I’ve worked on features and smoked (yet not drank – a miracle) and that’s about all. Hardly worth posting then, except to keep a promise for at least one day, and also to say I will be posting more regularly but only when there’s at least a wisp of something to report. There’s no point just doing this: quoting part of yesterday’s post and then banging on about pretty much nothing.

Agreed? Good. This shit just got real again.

Holy cow indeed, and apologies for the long break. I’ve been in a funk, you see, and it was a funk that showed no signs of becoming less funky until sometime in the middle of last night when I decided, once and for all, to pull my act together and wrap this thing up. By the end of this month I’ll pitch another 300 magazines, no excuses. That, I realise, sounds ridiculous. It sounds ridiculous both because it’s a considerable amount of work (regular readers will have caught me trying to outmanoeuvre considerable amounts of work in the past), and also because pitchingtheworld so far has been littered with empty and easily broken promises.

Not this time though. No way. I’ll be tearing back into that book this afternoon and continue to tear into it until I’m done. No excuses. Well, a few excuses: I’ve got a feature to write today, and another tomorrow, and a talk to organise, and a possible gig reviewing 70 restaurants to get signed off – but then, when that’s all done, no excuses. None. Until I think up some new ones.

I’ll also be updating my progress daily (possibly twice daily – actually no way) from now on. This shit just got real.

The letter below doesn’t require a great deal of explanation. For those of you who don’t know, Paul Dacre is the editor of the Daily Mail and chairman of the PCC’s Editors’ Code of Practice Committee. He’s also a good egg. I was paid this morning. 

Dear Paul Dacre,
I’ve no idea if this will reach you, be ignored, or be binned, so I’ll endeavour to be brief.
In short, I’m in a tight spot. Earlier this week I was due a payment from the Daily Mail for a feature I had filed on November 5th. Today – and despite assurances to the contrary – I’ve just found out that the invoice will not be processed until the second week of January. For many writers, one unpaid invoice in December wouldn’t cause a great deal of alarm, but for this writer it has. I was banking on that payment to get me through Christmas and all the expense involved; without it, it looks as if I’m going to have to come up with novel (i.e. badly homemade) gifts for people, or no gifts at all.
I was wondering then, if you were able to use your not inconsiderable clout and get the invoice paid this month, the month I was expecting it. I understand this is an unorthodox (and no doubt annoying) approach in getting payment, but perhaps you could inject a little Christmas spirit into my life. It’s probably scant consolation, but I run an award-winning blog read mainly by journalists, and I would love to title my next post: “Paul Dacre – A Good Egg”.
Can you be a good egg?
Merry Christmas,

Pitchingtheworld

Some people I spoke to last night had some interesting things to say about Pitching the World. One of those people was a girl at a party. Another one of those people was my wife. The girl at a party reckoned she had been on this award-winning fucker, but had cause to read some posts “three or more times” to understand them. Is Pitching the World sometimes impenetrable? Is my snazzy journo-speak offputting? All this talk of copy, filing, rewrites, deadlines and so forth – although that, really, is about as technical as it gets, I don’t really know many more journalistic terms – is it not what you want? Maybe I can do a glossary. Or maybe – check this out – I can write with a little more clarity.

Second then, my wife. She claims – and you’ve got to hear this, it’s ridiculous – she claims that I’ve exaggerated my heavy drinking, poverty, cigarette smoking and general deadbeatness in order to impress readers and present an image of myself of how I would like to be. Her argument for this, being that I “buy the most expensive sausages in the supermarket”. Now, my wife is mostly brilliant, but here she’s talking complete rot. I could go into the ins and outs of why it’s bullshit, but I’m drunk, and poor and smoking four cigarettes at once. I’ve also got to file some copy, copy that was in before the deadline but had to be rewritten.

Plus, if that’s not enough to deal with, I’ve got my trial at the peerless Colchester United tomorrow and need to spend the next few hours having a series of panic attacks. Wish me luck. With the trials, not the panic attacks. I’m pretty ace at those by now.

If you were a casual observer of Pitching the World – and you could well be: I had someone on here a couple of days ago who had searched for “what are exotic meals?” and up popped this shit – you might be forgiven for thinking that within these pages there would be valuable information to read about the process and business of writing. For a start, it’s fundamentally a blog about pitching magazines with ideas for features. It also has some arresting, yet helpful-sounding titles: “Rewrites” and “Deadlines” and “Money” among them. You might read a post or two and feel as if there’s the possibility of learning something. You would look at my Rewrites post and think: ah, good, he’s going to be charting his progress up until now with some easy-to-follow pie charts. He’ll be doing this next week, because he said he would. The more you looked however, the more disappointed you would become. He’s not going to do those pie charts (and this is you), because he either is incapable of doing them, or his progress so far has been so tragic that he can’t bring himself to let us all know what he’s really been up to these last three months. This man is a soak and a fraud. Let’s kill him.

But don’t kill me just yet. I have a pretty much inescapable deadline that will see this project wrapped up. At the end of January, Pitching the World will be no more. The British Journalism Review – which, because it’s quarterly, I assume is prestigious – have commissioned an article from me about my experiences of pitching every magazine in the Writers’ & Artists’ Shitbook and I’m going to fire off something to each one in there, even if it means staying awake throughout January.

So yes, you’ll have me around for another six weeks ago and then, like Keyser Soze, I’ll be gone. Just like that. Imagine that, my award-winning blog: Gone.

Except it probably won’t be gone. And it’s not really an it, it’s just a me spouting a lot of nonsense and I’ll refuse to stop spouting nonsense, I’ll simply come up with another skeleton upon which I can piss out my half-baked thoughts and pretend it’s all very special.

One last thing: does anyone have any football boots? Size 9? My trial with Colchester United is on Friday.