Reading

Part of the job of being a writer is to read which makes reading much less pleasurable since it's a job. There is a ready replacemement though: poetry. I can now put poetry in the interests section of my cv. Of course I don't read poetry just as I didn't read fiction before I had "writer" in the employment section of my cv. That's what hobbies are: things you want to do but don't unlike work which is what you don't want to do but do.

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.

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Inspired by those who place their unpublished books on the shelves in Waterstones to look like they are proper authors I have come up with: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

Cement

Got a new rejection that told me not to be disheartened since they receive 500 submissions a week and take on 2 new writers a year. "You may as well send it to a cement factory," a writer friend of mine has suggested and so...

"Dear Rugby Cement

I have recently finished my first novel and, given the outstanding reputation of your cement factory,..."

Dear Gordon X

Also, Gordon X, the literary agent who will save me and "Extreme Normality" from obscurity and crystalise the literary revolution that will bring down the age of celebrity. Also, you will know that in writing they say that, "3 examples make a case".

Eg.

He led a frugal life. He ate berries and lived in a hut.

compared to

He led a frugal life. He ate berries, lived in a hut and wore rags.

Ipso facto we need a 3rd Gordon to dominate the world.

It shall be me.

GORDONS

With a Gordon in the country's top job and another as our top swearing cook it is certainly no exaggeration at all to say that this is the Age of the Gordon. Long gone are the days when we had to look to bald newsreaders (Honeycombe) imperialists (of Khartoum) Ming fighters (Flash) morons (Gordon is a) or racing drivers turned expletive (Bennet) Now we can get behind Brown and Ramsay and conquer the rest of the spheres of human achievements just like the Andrews have been doing for years.

I'm taking on literature where so far we've been quite bad, managing only a middle name (George Gordon Byron) and who cares about a middle name?