Pitching the World

Me to my brother the other day:

“Men shouldn’t work like this. We should be fixing cars” – I don’t have a driving licence, a car, or any interest in cars or fixing cars – “or building houses” – unbelievably, I can sort of do this – “or, you know, just getting out there.”

Where is out there? What should I – we – be doing when we get there? Who cares – the point is men shouldn’t be huddled over their prissy little Macs in their Nan’s dining room all day and calling it work. They should be working on cars (trucks better) or getting out there.

That’s not really my point. In fact, that’s not point at all. The point is that I’ve had a sea change in my thinking. Rather than spend day after nerve-jangingly day looking at the details of these 642 (Jesus) magazines and wondering what I can write for them, I’ve decided to do it the other way around: decide what I want to write about and approach these magazines accordingly. Here then, slightly long-windedly, is some of the stuff I’ve come up with that I would like to write about.

1. Have we Created Our Own Universe? Assuming that time doesn’t exist in the way that we imagine and assuming that in some point in the future we are scientifically literate enough to create an embryonic universe and let it grow does that mean that we are indeed living right now in a universe that we have created in the future? (Note to commissioning eds: further details sketchy at this stage. The above was based on a conversation my (scientist) brother had with me recently and it led to me having a panic attack which led to me having to drink four whiskys. If interested, I can go back to him armed with questions.)

2. Where Have All the Proper Dogs Gone? It struck me the other day that all the dogs hanging out these days are squat, muscley, man-eating fucks. What’s happened to Labradors and Golden Retrievers and just ordinary dogs? Exactly, they’ve disappeared. If I had been in a coma for the last 20 years – and I wish that I had been in a coma for the last 20 years – then the dog landscape of today would be completely foreign to me. With that in mind, imagine what the dog landscape will be like 20 years in the future. Go on: imagine it.

3. Can I Eat Myself Clever? I spend a month eating food and drinking drinks that are supposedly good for the brain: oily fish, certain fruits and vegetables, other stuff that I’m not aware of yet. At the beginning and the end of the month I have an IQ test to see if I can eat myself clever.

4. Can I Fuck Myself Clever? I spend a month sleeping with very brainy women. At the beginning and the end of the month I have an IQ test to see if I can fuck myself clever.

5. Can I Drug Myself Clever? As above, but with drugs.

6. How Many Old People Look Like Vince Cable? I’m writing this in a cafe and a man just strolled past who looked EXACTLY like Vince Cable. Maybe it was him. But then I looked across the road and saw someone else who looked EXACTLY like Vince Cable and it got me thinking: as men age, many of them begin to resemble Vince Cable. How many? Fuck knows, that’s what I’m going to find out.

7. Can Thinking Like Marcus Aurelius Cure Depression? Answer: yes, probably.

8. The No Man. I say no to everything for a bit. Probably for a month. Can make a lot of it up. Might be a problem accepting the commission.

9. Can I Think Myself Fit? There is some evidence to suggest simply thinking about certain muscles promotes growth. I spend a month (it’s always a month) in a room thinking about my triceps, then another month thinking about my calves, and then another month trying to grow a massive neck.

10. Why I Love Cricket.

Any takers? Come on you miserable fucks. You know what to do: pitchingtheworld*at*hotmail.com

In my more idle moments (i.e. all the time) I often wonder if my talents might be better directed towards writing situation comedies. I know, I’m full of my damned self. It’s just that this freelance journalism business can be disconcertingly gruelling, full of rejection and hope and uncertainty, whereas writing for television is a breeze.

So, this afternoon I was playing around with a few ideas for sitcoms. I’ll pop them down below. I better warn you though, if you’re writing a sitcom yourself and it isn’t terribly brilliant you may want to look away now as this is gonna hurt.

What Am I – A Fucking Town Planner? 35-year-old Danny Rampton is in the pub with a few friends one evening in (probably) October when one of them (Mark, possibly) asks the best way to get to a certain street on the other side of town. “What am I – a fucking town planner?” Danny responds, to much hilarity from his friends. It is the first time ever that Danny has properly made them laugh. From that moment on, Danny decides to answer every question posed to him – from his wife asking him if he’d like a cup of tea, to his boss wondering how far he has got on that report – with the same response: “What am I – a fucking town planner?” (Note to Commissioning Editors: might struggle to stretch this beyond Series One.)

Where’s My Sandwich? Set in Huddersfield. A man keeps being unable to locate his sandwich. The end of each episode sees him wondering aloud where his sandwich is, hence Where’s My Sandwich? (Note to Commissioning Editors: Potential Series Two – Have You Seen My Other Shoe?)

Acid Gran An OAP takes loads of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide everyday, much to the amusement of her friends. (Note to Commissioning Editors: If we manage to dig up some of those 1960s/70s illustrators, this could work equally well as a children’s cartoon.)

ShitCome Initially ShitCome was going to be simply titled Sitcom and was going to bleak, post-industrial and entirely joke-free. Much like anything on ITV. Then, I thought, perhaps call it ShitCom and it be about a web developer with incontinence. Finally, splendidly, I thought of ShitCome, set in Cheltenham and about a builder who suffers from premature ejaculation/no ejaculation/generally poor loads. He also has problems giving women orgasms. (Note to Commissioning Editors: Danny Wallace has expressed an interest in playing the lead role.)

Further note to Commissioning Editors: The raw ideas above are available at between $15,000-$20,000; fleshed-out forms at $30,000-$40,000; and six-part series’ with rewrites from $200,000. Please email pitchingtheworld-at-hotmail.com for further information.

“Do you know what your problem is?” A friend asked (or rather wanted to tell) me one evening last week. Oh God here we go, I thought, please don’t tell me what my problem is. I know what my problem is. And it is not a problem, it is a series of problems and I have become pretty adept at hiding from them and I don’t need you adding to the list, giving me more stuff that I need to hide from.

So instead of listening to what my problem was, I looked around the bar we were sitting in and tried to work out if there was some way of letting the tables of pretty women in there know that I was a writer. I took out a pen. It did not work. Then, for no discernible reason whatsoever, I thought about a giant balloon version of Shaun Ryder just endlessly drifting through space. Three days of constant drinking can do that to a man.

“Sorry?” I said. “What was that?”

“I could tell you weren’t listening. You want things to fuck up for you. You want to deliberately make things difficult for yourself. You get yourself in these good positions, then find a way to fuck them up. It’s weird.”

For a bit I couldn’t reply. I couldn’t reply because my brain was yelling at me to blurt out “SPACEAGESHAUNRYDER!” Jesus, I thought, that’s a new one. I wonder what it could be? Tourettes? A brain tumour? Cancer of the speech?

In the end I said: “That’s the most ridiculous fucking thing anyone has ever said to me. But it’s also probably true.”

And so, a change. From now on I’m going to try to not deliberately fuck things up. But how does one start? Yesterday I started by waking at seven and meditating and reading a book. Blimey, I thought, that felt pretty good. So I did some more meditation and read some more of a book and exercised and ate a grapefruit and trimmed my armpit hair and emailed some people wondering if they wanted someone like me doing some work for them and then made a short film about Jesus and then came up with a three-month plan. The film was pretty awful. But the day was pretty good and my old pals the night terrors didn’t visit me yesterday and it’s a start.

One can start again at 35 can’t one? Of course one can, of course I can. If not, what’s the alternative? Not make a fresh start? Carry on as I am? Try and find God and tell him that I’ve fucked this life up and can I have another one please? No, no and no.

Oh, and I’ve decided to tinker with my pitching style too, decided that whilst these jokey woe-is-me affairs have been fun – and, come on, we’ve all had a good time – it’s perhaps time to toughen them up and make them sing. And dance. My pitches from now on, then, are going to be tough cold hard steel song and dances. That sounds terrible – worse than my film. They will be something though. Something good. Just you watch.

Holidays. I´m not sure if holidays are my strongpoint; not sure if holidays are supposed to be like this. For a few days I did nothing but drink and sleep and once I´d exhausted both of those, I did nothing but analyse my life to date.

Have you ever analysed your life to date? Don´t bother, it´s scary. Of all the things you can do with your life, analysing it to date is not recommended. Someone once said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but whoever that someone was clearly hadn´t spent a week or so in Mallorca with me.

So, Mallorca. Thirteen years ago I was in this town with a girl I loved and who loved me back and I messed it all up. Last year I was in this town with a girl I loved and who loved me back and I messed that up as well. I´ve had jobs over here that I´ve messed up. And friendships. And bar tabs.

I´ve come to realise that I´ve messed a lot of things up. I sit on my balcony drinking too-warm cans of beer and chainsmoking too-nice cigarettes and I watch the happy families and happier couples and they don´t seem to have fucked anything up at all. I don´t have anyone to go to dinner with or a driving licence or a mortgage or any possessions beyond two bags of clothes that I´m fast hating and I don´t really have any work at the moment and am possibly becoming more atrophied and Octoberish by the second and and and.

And perhaps I´m not very good at this. You know, perhaps I´m not cut out to live my life very well.

That´s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is better.

Another way of looking at it is this: I´m 35 and a professional writer and have written for some of the best publications in the world and I am drinking warm beer and smoking cigarettes on a balcony somewhere in Europe and writing in my notebook and although I´m getting divorced from my (pregnant) neuroscientist wife I´m not being a turd about it. If I´d told all that to an adolescent me, the adolescent me would have buckled, would have been so overwhelmed that he would have tried to fuck the 35-year-old me in a bin somewhere. Probably.

And I´ve got money owed to me. Not loads, but enough to go anywhere in the world – Africa, Australia, Argentina – and rent a small room and live for a month, possibly longer and earn more money. And if I´m so worried about crumbling self-esteem, self-respect, self-discipline and so on (anything to do with the self, then) I can decide to do something about it. “At the moment of commitment, the universe conspires to assist you,” someone once said, and someone else once said: “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything,” and I think – hope – that they´re both right.

Oh dear, this hasn´t been about the writing yips has it? And hasn´t it been terribly pretentious too, quoting Plato and Goethe and Marty McFly all in the same post? I did have them though recently. The writing yips, that is. Couldn´t put a word down. Terrible. Worrying, too, when your income depends exclusively on writing one word after another. Still, they´ve gone now, or are at least in the shadows. This has helped. So, you know, thanks very much for that.

I’ve been ever so slightly concerned about my recent erratic behaviour, ever so slightly concerned that over the weekend I sought (and took on board) the advice of an ant.

Picture this, if you can be bothered. It’s Sunday and I’m sitting in my Nan’s back garden chainsmoking. The bulk of my chainsmoking, incidentally, takes place in pubs, but if the financial gods are against me – as they often are – then I’m forced to conduct my chainsmoking in my Nan’s back garden. This is not good. It’s mainly not good because my Nan is unaware – or gives the impression of being unaware – of my smoking and I’m forced to come up with excuses as to why I’m spending huge chunks of my time in her back garden. For a while, I pretended that I was very enthusiastic about using my telephone; I would say things like “I’ve just got to phone one of my editors” or “I’m going to call my agent. Big things are happening you know. Very big things” and off I’d go to hide and smoke. But not now. Now my phone’s bust and she knows my phone’s bust and so I’ve started saying: “Oh, I think I’m going to do some press ups in the garden” and off I go to not do press ups – in fact, to do the exact opposite of press ups – and I suspect my Nan is worried that I’ve got some sort of muscle wasting disease because the result of all these press ups is unapparent. If anything, my arms and chest are getting smaller. This is no way for a 35-year-old man to live. I don’t think I need to tell you this.

Fuck, where were we? Yes, smoking. No, ants. So, I was staring at an ant in the garden and it was crawling towards a crack in the concrete and I thought: “If that ant crawls into that bit of concrete, it means I need to get away.”

About a day later, two things occurred to me. First, that this has the makings of a book, a book about a man who bases all his decisions on the actions of small animals. It’d be like The Dice Man but watered down and, unbelievably, worse. Perhaps Danny Wallace could write it. My second thought was better. My second thought was: If a man bases his decision about going away on whether or not an ant crawls into a bit of concrete, then perhaps he needs to get away regardless of what that ant does.

So, I’m going away. To Mallorca. Tomorrow. For how long I don’t know. I just phoned up my bank to tell them that I would be away for a while and when the telephone operator asked me where I was going and for how long I didn’t want to just say Mallorca as I thought she might think I’m a bit shit, so I said: “Mallorca. For a bit. For how long I don’t know. And then I might be going to Malawi for a while.”

When I got off the phone I thought, “Well maybe I WILL go to Malawi for a while. I have a friend out there who keeps (twice) asking me to go and see him. Perhaps it’s better to take heed of my own words, the ones that come out of my own mouth, rather than the advice of an ant.”

I read something the other day and it’s the real reason I want to get away. Here it is:

It is hard work to slaughter a beast but when it is done it is done. If you are MAKING ART the labour never ends, no peace, no Sabbath, just eternal churning and cursing and worrying and fretting and there is nothing else to think of but the idiots who buy it or the insects destroying TWO DIMENSIONAL SPACE.

The capitals aren’t mine. And it’s not that I’m making art, but journalism can feel like eternal churning and cursing and worrying and fretting and I need to run away from it for a while and drink three bottles of red wine a day and take two swims a day and maybe – you never know – just relax for a bit.

So, on Tuesday evening after a gloriously upbeat supper (a Kinder Egg with a whisky chaser, if you’re at all interested) I decided to send an identical email to 50 publications. I’ve run out of steam, you see, and didn’t have the stomach to pitch actual thought-out ideas. I realise this is not good. Anyway, here’s the letter:

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

To: Loads

From: Pitching the World

Subject: Belief

Dear Editorial,

I am in the process of trying to write features for all 642 magazines listed in the 2010 edition of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook. Among those 642 magazines is yours. This ridiculous process began back in 2009 (for a while I called it a ‘project’ but I’ve given up on that now) after I had quit my job as a political speechwriter.

Now, if you consider my decision to quit my job as a political speechwriter and return to journalism to be a terrible one – and you’d be right to – my idea of writing for 642 magazines is even worse.

You should see me now, almost two years down the line. When I began, I was living with my neuroscientist wife in Stoke Newington. Now I’m getting divorced and live in my Nan’s dining room in Boscombe. Before I had hair, lots of it, and it wasn’t grey. Now I have little hair, and it is grey – white, even. I had money and shoes and confidence. Now, well I suppose I don’t have to spell it out, but now I have none of those things. What do I have? I have night terrors, addictions and crumbling self-esteem. Oh, and belief. I still have a sliver or two of belief.

After describing myself in such thrilling detail it seems a little ridiculous to say that I’d like to write for you. But I would. I’m in a hole you see, and it’s a hole I’d like to get out of. Are you farming work out to freelancers at the moment? I’ve written hundreds of pieces over the years for the Guardian, the Independent, Square Mile, Square Meal, the British Journalism Review, Business Destinations and plenty more. I reckon I could write a nice feature for you. Or a mini-feature. Or an opinion piece. Anything really. A paragraph? Do you need any paragraphs writing?

What are my chances? Slim? None? Reasonable? Please leave me alone?

Splendid clippings available on request.

I look forward to hearing from you.

With best wishes,

Pitching the World

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Now, that’s not the sort of letter established or prospective journalists should be sending out. Go on a course called How to be a Journalist and you will be told to do the opposite of what I’ve done in that letter. For a start, it isn’t in any way tailored. I’ve sent it to generic email addresses (editorial@wherever.com) and haven’t addressed anyone specifically, simply plumping for “Dear Editorial”. This, apparently, is not good. I’ve no clear ideas of what I want to be writing about – in fact no idea at all. I point out that I don’t have shoes, money, confidence and that I live in my Nan’s dining room. I say that I have night terrors and addicti – fuck it, you’ve read the letter already, you don’t need me going over it again. You get the point, I hope, that perhaps it’s not a very good way of trying to go about getting work.

Well – and perhaps one or two of you have seen this coming – you’d be wrong. Check this out, my first reply and from the Senior and Online Editor of Prospect, one of the finest magazines in the world:

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

To: Pitching the World

From: Mary Fitzgerald

Subject: Belief

Hello Steve,

What an undertaking. I can’t promise we can help, but let’s try.

A few questions: how many of the 642 have you written for thus far? Does online count? Is there anything in particular you’d like to pitch? And do you think there’s anything you’d be able to fashion into an item for our diary section?

Very best,

Mary

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Well. Well well well. That’s probably a one-off though you turd, I thought to myself, an anomaly. Yeah? Well anomalise this:

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

From: Caspar Melville, Editor New Humanist

To: Pitching the World

Subject: Belief

Well Steve what can I say? If I say no I’m dooming your project to failure, if I say yes I’m fuelling your self-delusion and making it more likely that you will write a book about it all and get rich and famous and find a new wife and be able to afford a Rooney-style weave-on.

So it’s a dilemma. You can evidently write and are funny.. so find something relevant to New Humanist- work that pitch babee

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

And then this:

From: Jamie Melville

To: Pitching the World

Subject: Belief

Hi Steve

Thanks for your letter.

Sadly we are no longer commissioning new writers for paid work. We do accept some unpaid submissions, however. Having said this I’m not sure how keen you are to write articles about sex, gender (rather than party) politics and erotica, gratis, for the doubtful kudos of being published in ER.

And this, from the Oldie this morning:

Dear Steve,
We do accept freelance submissions for Modern Life, Olden Life, Rants and World’s Worst Dumps, as well as features. Please do send submissions to jeremylewis@theoldie.co.uk and note that we do not commission, all articles are done on spec.
Very best wishes,
Claire

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

And I’ve also been commissioned by Yoga & Health to write a piece on meditation (can someone please tell me something about meditation), and encouraged to pitch Your Cat with ideas and have even began some sort of correspondence with the people hanging out over at Practical Boat Owner.

The lesson? The lesson is do what you feel, fuck around, be honest and everything will be okay.

Here’s a reply from a Christian magazine:

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

From: Russ Bravo

To: Pitching the World

Subject: Belief

Sorry, Steven – I’d like to help but …

3. Danny Wallace

There’s no way this series isn’t going well. The first instalment back in (I think) September 2010 featured Alexis Petridis and Neal Butterworth and definitely wasn’t shit. This is the second instalment and might be a bit shit. Might be. For a start Danny Wallace isn’t really a journalist, but he has written whimsical pieces for a handful of broadsheets and has a regular (whimsical) column in Shortlist and I do want to kick the you-know-what out of him so he’ll have to do.

So, Danny Wallace. I want to get away. I need to get away. I’m broke, going mad and drinking too much and I’m hoping that going away will magically sort all of this out – that somehow being somewhere that isn’t here will make me less broke, less mad and less reliant on alcohol to get me through the day. It will won’t it? Just say yes.

Which brings us slightly clumsily back to Danny Wallace whose second book, Yes Man, I found myself reading in Boscombe library yesterday. I read it – or rather, I read some of it – as a mistake. It was among the travel books (I need to get away) and I remembered someone saying to me once that my writing was a lot like Danny Wallace’s so I picked it up and read a hundred or so pages and wanted to cry.

For those of you who don’t know, Yes Man is about Danny Wallace saying ‘yes’ to stuff instead of ‘no’ to stuff and finding himself in all sorts of hilarious, improbable and probably falsified situations. His first book, Join Me, was an hilarious, improbable and probably falsified account of him “accidentally starting a cult”. This is the kind of caper that he gets up to. He wrote a travel column for (I think) the Guardian about going around Australia with his (probably) lovely wife and visiting big tomatoes or something. He can write about anything now. He’s in a situation where he can go to his agent or publisher or a newspaper editor and say: “I’d like to do something where I go around the world talking to fish who wear hats” and they’d say yes. Or:  “How about a column in which I document my crazy decision to wear ONLY red trousers with yellow shirts or ONLY yellow trousers with red shirts. And I do this for a year. Don’t worry, I can make most of it up.” Or: “Maybe I should just say “Ooohh” for a whole year, or eat my underpants for breakfast, or fuck all of the truck drivers in Leeds…” and people who commission this stuff would say yes yes yes.*

This is what I want (perhaps not the truck drivers) and I’m jealous and the reason behind this vitriol is I know that if Danny Wallace had come up with the idea of Pitching the World he would have made a success out of it, would have landed a book deal and column and television series. What have I landed? I’ve landed night terrors, crumbling self-esteem, a growing problem with addictions and eczema on my hand. The idea behind this project is good, but the execution has been woeful. Perhaps I should lie about stuff more, like Danny Wallace does.

Danny, if you’re reading this I don’t really want to kick the fuck out of you. The main reason I don’t want to is that if you did happen upon this you’d probably take it to your agent and he’d say: “Do it. But write a column and book about it and we’ll sell it for loads” and you’d write about your training and make it quite funny and use loads of exclamation marks but you’d get pretty fit and punchy as well whereas I’d just sit in my Nan’s dining room and chainsmoke and drink. About two days before the big fight I’d do some press ups and give up after about nine, thinking “Fuck this, I’ll just get drunk and smack him” and I will get drunk and try and smack you but I’ll miss and you’ll smash my stupid yet once handsome face to bits and you’ll make a million pounds from it.

Next up: Dave Gorman. And probably Johann Hari.

Danny Wallace, earlier

* Jesus, after writing that I looked at his Wikipedia entry and read the following:

“On 16 December 2008 he presented his second episode of Horizon on BBC2, Where’s My Robot. In it, Wallace travelled the world to meet roboticists and ask them, simply: “Where’s my robot?””

You couldn’t make this shit up. He could, but you couldn’t.

I have a favour to ask. No, no – wait, come back, I don’t want money or sex from you.* Rather, I’d like you – that’s right, YOU – to tell me what your favourite posts have been over the last year and three quarters. This isn’t to feed my crumbling ego,** but my agent and I are putting together a proposal that we’ll soon be sending to publishers and some of the material we’re submitting will be previous blog posts. I know, I know, we’re both lunatics.

But can you help? Please. You don’t even have to be specific, you can just say “I liked that one where you drank Pernod in the shower and played with yourself”or “That was good, when you were in Dubai and couldn’t find a supermarket” or “You know that time you fucked up? That should be in there.” Actually, perhaps not that last one; perhaps I’d like you to be more specific than that.

Anyway, you’d be helping me out hugely. And whoever I judge to leave the best suggestion gets a can of Skol Super and 10 Camel Lights in the post. I’m serious about this. For the record, I think the best post I’ve written is Accentuate the Negative (February 2011) and the worst one Five of the Best (June 2011).

Thank you all very much. If you’re a little wary or shy about putting your suggestions up here, feel free to email me at: pitchingtheworld*at*hotmail.com

*I do really.

**It is really

INT. DINING ROOM – DAY

14:16 Thursday 16 June, 2011.

MATTHEW HAMILTON: Hello. Is that Steven?

ME: I think so. Is that my award-winning agent?

MH: Hahahahaha. Yes.

ME: [TWITCHES]

MH: I was speaking about you last night. For an hour.

ME: Fuck. Really? To the police? They’re lying. Your therapist?

MH: –

ME: It wasn’t my Mum was it?

MH: Ha. [beat] Look, let’s talk Pitching the World.

And so we do.

Here’s what we’ve decided. Matthew is going away on holiday and I’m going to work on a proposal (and sample chapters) for a book based upon this blog. Sounds – or rather, reads – ridiculous written down, doesn’t it? Once Matthew gets back from his holiday (wish I was going on holiday) at the beginning of July we’re going to send off the proposal and sample chapters (wish I was a proposal and sample chapters) to publishers. Said publishers are going to start a bidding war (wish I was etc.) and eventually one is going to rise out of all the filth and offer me lots of money to write a book based on Pitching the World.

That, I think, is the idea. And there’s no way it’s going to fuck up (wish there was no way I was going to fuck up).

I haven’t quit by the way. That last post wasn’t my last post, by the way. I think it all just got a bit too much – my soupy ways, lack of money, living arrangements, the ridiculous idea of pitching all of these magazines – and I just wanted to curl up in a corner of a room somewhere and stay there, like a dying mouse or bear or horse or whatever animal goes to the corner of a room to die.

But then, this morning, a breakthrough. Who says this whole caper needs to be a success? I mean it clearly will be, but so what if it isn’t? Isn’t that something still? A kind of anti-journalism book, or a guide on how not to live your life – wouldn’t that be something still? The best bits of biographies are always the first 70 pages or so when the subject is struggling – going to auditions and not getting anywhere, or having manuscripts rejected, or living in a subway eating cans of tuna and drinking super strength lager. These are the best bits. And the book could – could – be like that. Imagine: a whole book of that. With no success (in fact I’m far, far less successful than when I started), no uplifting finale and no lessons learnt except perhaps JOURNALISM IS FUCKED or THE WRITER OF THIS BOOK IS FUCKED.

I don’t know though. We’re tossing around a few ideas at the moment. That’s right, tossing them around. And the end of the book could – could – be more uplifting than the end of Rocky, you never know. After posting this I’m going to write and send a letter to editors of magazines practically begging to write for them. It will be a good letter. A begging letter – can you imagine? Oh I’ve sunk low, I’ve sunk low all right. But I can sink much lower. Just you watch me.

If anyone needs me, once I’ve written that letter I’ll be in a subway in Boscombe eating tuna out of a can and drinking super strength lager. Come and say hello.

*Format courtesy of Rob Long, author of Conversations with My Agent. Go and buy it, it’s good. Incidentally, Rob Long’s second book was represented by my agent – perhaps you can go and buy that too, although I can’t remember the title. 

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