The sword of the naive knight gets stuck in the pudding of life.

Wednesday 18 June 2008

Oh God!

The real real problem with getting published is this: When you write you are God - you create the world and the characters and then you control what they do. You can cause Armageddon or make the cow jump over the moon or anything. Then you finish being God and you send off your universe to those who decide which God they want and which universe will sell at that moment and they say, "Oh no, I don't like this universe, I don't think we should have llamas in it, I don't think that toes should be able to talk, I don't like the way that you spend so long talking about sandwiches. Oh no, I do not choose this God and his universe," and then you have to deal with a whole universe being rejected. When everyone is God then it doesn't feel so special.

Of course there's really only one God and his name is Mammon.

Monday 9 June 2008

Extreme Agent Bothering

"Think Outside the Box" say those people who have their heads in boxes just reading out lists of cliches that they've written on the inside in an attempt to appear wise - management consultants.

Inspired by those who place their unpublished books on the shelves in Waterstones to look like they are proper authors I have come up with:

1) Befriend a literary agent's dying relative.
2) Have an offspring and raise her as a publisher.
3) Offer to be Salman Rushdie's double and gradually take over from him.
4) Write a novel concerning anything to do with a celebrity - "Fern Britton's Pyloric Sphincter"?

Fern Britton's Pyloric Sphincter

I see that Fern Britton's Pyloric Sphincter has a new auto-biography out. In "Keep it Flowing" Ms. Pyloric Sphincter tells of her early years as a conduit to Britton's gastric content. Fans of the nation's most pleasant person's tummy valve will be interested in the late night cake binges and the night's out with Phillip Schofield's ragged colon. Of course this all changed 2 years ago and Fern Britton's Pyloric Sphincter doesn't have much good to say about Fern Britton's Gastric Band. "You try your best and work really hard to get to the top and then along comes this untalented upstart and suddenly she's Britain's most famous stomach-based celebrity."