the perfect literary agent rejection letter

As I wrote previously, the standard of rejection form letters from literary agencies is pathetic. I am not suggesting that they go to the trouble of constructing detailed critiques of rejected work, nor even that they bother with (some would say the common courtesy of) putting the author's name at the top of the letter and signing at the end.

However, if you're going to construct a form letter, why not spend more than thirty seconds and actually do it properly? The letter given below was written by me, this morning, in about ten minutes. It is friendly, helpful, deals with every type of author, fits on one side of A4 and does not encourage the rejected author to attempt to embark on a dialogue with the rejecting agency.

I offer this letter, waiving all my intellectual property rights, to any agency that wishes to use it. The single condition of waiving my rights is that no agency ever sends my own letter to me - whether you want to send a personal reply or a different rejection form letter is entirely up to you.

***

Thank you for sending us your work to read and consider. Unfortunately, we do not feel that we can represent you.

Please bear in mind that this is the opinion of one agency and should not discourage you! There is a finite number of authors that we can properly represent. We can only take on a new author rarely and when we have a strong feeling that the writing is sufficiently fresh, exciting and likely to sell. We must believe we can convince a publisher to take the risk of editing, designing, printing and advertising your book. If we don't truly love the work, it makes the job of convincing others much harder.

Clearly you should put your best foot forward and move on. Here is our advice, most obvious ideas first:

• Contact other agencies (always remembering to find out their submission criteria before contacting them and never wasting your time writing to agencies who are not taking on new authors.)
  
  
• Contact other authors. Many authors have used authonomy.com or writing.com to discuss each other's work in a friendly and supportive environment.
  
  
• Get professional advice. The Literary Consultancy (literaryconsultancy.co.uk) or Writers' Services (writersservices.co.uk) both sell editorial advice.
  
  
• Find your own readers. Are you writing for children? If so, contact local schools and offer to read from your work and to answer questions on writing. Are you writing for adults? Contact reading groups and ask if they would be interested in reading your work – exchange their feedback for your presence at their meetings. For children or adult fiction, try asking bookshop staff if they could stock your book – offer to read, take questions, sign copies.
  
  
• Self-publish. Either lulu.com or createspace.com offer quick and easy self-publishing services. This does not rule out being published by a mainstream publishing house at a later date but would enable you to offer copies to schools/reading groups/bookshops.

Look again at your work. Be brutal – is it really the best writing you are capable of? Are there sentences, paragraphs or even whole chapters where you just thought that it would do? If so, erase them and rewrite them. Don't be precious – they are only words, you are not murdering your own children.

Are you reluctant to read to schools/reading groups/bookshops? If so, why? Do you not feel that your work is good enough? If you are not sufficiently proud to read it aloud to an audience, why do you think anyone should buy a copy in a shop and why do you think an agent would want to represent you and your work?

If you have read all of the above and are still determined then the best of luck to you. Feel free to write to us if you become a major success and we will congratulate you without a hint of sour grapes. But be prepared for a long, dispiriting and difficult slog with no guarantees and a good chance of a pitiful income even if your books make it to the shelves of the shops. You must throw yourself into this project with clear knowledge of the way the industry works, with thick skin to handle rejection and with utter faith in the quality of the work you are producing. If you cannot do all of that, be pleased that you have written a book but it is now time to find another career.

(Where we mention websites, they are examples of companies some authors use. We are not recommending or endorsing any organisations.)

***

Over to you - feel free to pick it apart but I defy anyone to deny that it's dramatically better than the woefully rubbish examples of real rejection letters I gave previously.

P.S. I have sent a copy of this letter to my most recent rejecters - those being the company that sent two terse sentences on a 'with compliments' slip and the company that sent the bad news on a sticker placed almost straight on a small piece of green cardboard. It wasn't even a nice shade of green.

I fully expect to hear nothing from either of them - I certainly don't expect them to start using the letter. However, if I hear anything back then you, dear readers, will be amongst the first to know.

replies and other matters

About three weeks ago, I sent samples of my work to three literary agencies. Coincidentally (unless they use the same reader?), I have received two responses in quick succession.

Now, I am not complaining about their turning me down. I know that successful agents have fairly full lists and are looking for something they feel to be outstanding. If they don't think that's me and my work then fair enough.

I am also not complaining about a lack of critique of my work - how could they possibly have the time, given the height of the pile of manuscripts from aspiring authors?

However, given that they're going to send a form letter in response, couldn't they maybe do slightly better than this:

"Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, we do not feel confident that we could sell your work effectively and will not be offering to represent your material. Thank you for your interest in (agency-name) and best of luck placing your work elsewhere."

Am I being unreasonable in suggesting that this is a bit rubbish? They don't owe me anything personal but surely, when writing the standard rejection slip, it could have been less cold?

The other, while still a rejection and while still impersonal, at least manages to sound friendly:

"Thank you for your recent email and the material which we have now looked at. As a small agency we take on very few of the many writers who approach us each year and, having considered your work, we do not feel we can effectively represent you.

We trust you will understand that the sheer volume of submissions to this office unfortunately prevents us from providing you with a more detailed and personal response.

May we take this opportunity to wish you success with another agent or publisher."

Anyone care to comment? Am I expecting too much from these people? As I said, I'm not asking for personal comments, or for a review of my work but maybe something that's not icy cold. After all, there's no pretty way to send a rejection but it is possible to put soft cushions around it.

why the rich should pay proper tax - in terms they might understand

So very much has already been written about the tax avoiders, not just Philip Green, Boots and Barclays but the charmers who earn 'only' around £200,000 and think it's just NOT FAIR that they have to pay so much tax - the people who'd rather pay a little to a smart accountant and a bit to a tax lawyer than the full whack to the inland revenue.

David Mitchell pretty much nailed the point here. To very briefly summarise - why should anyone pay any more tax than they have to? The averagely paid don't voluntarily stump up extra money for the taxman so why should the rich be expected to do so? As he correctly points out, the fault lies entirely with the government for providing these loopholes. The argument that they do so in stupidity and are amazed to find the loopholes exist doesn't entirely hold water because the obvious rejoinder would be to enquire why they don't just close them. Er, could it be because they don't want to?

As already mentioned on this blog, I recently visited an excellent exhibition about the early years of the band Queen (it's only on for another three days (including today), so you've got till Saturday 12 March to visit - more information here).

Around the time of their third album, the band members noticed that they were still being paid £60 per week, Freddie was being told he couldn't have a piano (but that they could rent him one) and Roger was being asked to stop hitting the drums so hard that he was breaking the drumsticks because replacing them, apparently, was an unbearable expense. They certainly wouldn't have stumped up to buy Brian a new fireplace. The managers of the record company were simultaneously doing things like buying their third Rolls Royce or installing more swimming pools in their homes. The penny dropped (or rather, the pennies weren't dropping, ha ha) and the band began a lengthy process of extracting themselves from this exploitative situation.

(A few of the details above may be incorrect - I'm not trying to remember the definitive record, just the key ideas.)

Now, in principle, this is not a terrible approach to business. Record companies invest in a large number of musicians and, while some bring in untold fortunes, most pootle along earning little (or maybe nothing) until the company loses interest and drops them. Depending on the ratio of money-minded managers to artistically-minded managers, this may take a while or may happen quickly. Either way, there must be some cross-subsidy going on here - the successful bands must expect to pay out a (fair) percentage of their megabucks to the company so that it can continue to take risks on new acts. After all, there are probably bands as talented as Queen who never earned very much at all due to bad luck, or bad timing. Queen themselves had a major setback when Brian May was struck down with illness on their first American tour - I imagine many bands would not have recovered (artistically or financially even if medically) from something like that. It was only the continued financial help from the record company which took them to a place from which they could conquer the world.

Clearly I'm not condoning the supertax that Trident Records continued to levy far beyond the point of reason but what would happen if Queen had soaked up the starter capital from Trident while struggling and then, as soon as the money started pouring in, had refused to pay anything more to Trident and employed fancypants lawyers to make sure of this? I suspect that Trident wouldn't have lasted and, if such practice had been common, they would have been killed off long before they started working with Queen in 1971.

And yet that is how the super-rich behave with regard to taxation in this country. Consider the United Kingdom to be a massive venture-capital organisation. The country puts up the money for each and every one of us - it takes the colossal financial risk of education, health-care, roads, telecoms, airports, railways, utilities, etc, etc for each and every one of us.

A country can't act like a record company and simply drop the people who aren't going to bring in massive profits - it has to look after us from cradle to grave. And part of the social contract is that the rich pay their taxes properly - they subsidise everyone else - that's how they pay back the huge investment that was made in them and how they ensure that future generations can also benefit from a similar investment.

How long would venture-capital funds last if the successful businesses could simply run away and hide in a foreign country, continue to pull in large sums of money but refuse to hand over the agreed percentage? How long can nations function in any meaningful sense if they keep providing hiding places where the rich stash their money and then acting like they can't see it?

David Mitchell is right - the law needs to change - but, for this to happen, there must be the political appetite for it. Clearly, there is overwhelming public appetite for it - but governments don't care what the public think. There is only one way to change the situation and that is for the general public to be able to hide their money the way that the super-rich can enjoy.

I know very little about tax law, tax shelters, holding companies and all those other funny words rattled out on the news and in conspiracy theory films. However, somewhere out there is someone who could explain how the little people can shirk their taxes like the big boys. (The next sentence is me making it up as I go along.) Perhaps we need to establish an off-shore umbrella holding company which can employ millions of ordinary Brits and then subcontract their services to their regular employers, charging their usual salary but siphoning it through a tax efficient shell company before remunerating its theoretical employees in dividend payments. Perhaps we don't.

However we do it, once the little people are doing what the big people are doing, a change will have to come. Political appetite will not change by the public shouting in the street - not while the corporations are lobbying governments about how their employees couldn't be expected to get out of bed in the morning if they only earn 60% of a fortune instead of all of it. Political appetite will change when the tax gathered by the inland revenue slumps and no one is breaking the law.

Pros: Massive, legal protest. Everyone saves a few quid on their tax bill for a while. Law change to properly close many tax loopholes.

Cons: Country may go bankrupt - but with any luck the government wouldn't attempt to butch it out but would make the necessary changes quickly, thereby preventing anarchy and finishing with a substantial increase in funds to the exchequer.

Over to the experts - come on people - let's make this happen.

Brian May's fireplace guitar

Anyone currently in London should immediately make their way to the old Truman Brewery (near Spitalfields Market (near Liverpool Street Station)) to see the (free) exhibition on the early days of Queen (the band, not the monarch). Of course, when I say 'immediately', that only applies if it's during a time when they've got the doors open. See here for information on when that's likely to be. Oh, and you've only got until Saturday 12 March before it ends.

Allegedly it's going to Germany and Japan, although I have no information (or interest in finding out, frankly) whereabouts or when. Yes, I know they're both reasonably large countries. And great car makers too.

I was particularly struck by the mock-up of a fireplace, presumably representing the one butchered by Brian May to make his guitar. Now, the Wikipedia-reading part of me knows that he used the wooden mantel from a fireplace that a family friend was throwing out - but that knowledge doesn't stop the silly-joke-making part of me thinking he just picked the first abandoned fireplace he found and was lucky it was made of wood. I then had a hilarious image of him staggering around the stage with a marble-bodied guitar.

Supposing you had a marble-bodied guitar (or any other stone, for that matter) - if you tried that trick of using the strap to flip it over onto your back (for that wandering minstrel look), would it shatter your spine or garotte you? Or maybe both? Answers welcome - post your thoughts below. But visit the exhibition first.

Incidentally, if you visit, there's a chance to enter a competition to win one of Brian's home-made guitars (probably not the fireplace one). I hereby guarantee that, if I win, I will learn the play the instrument. Watch this space.

please follow these instructions when reading this...

Further to my earlier article, bemoaning the realisation that David Mitchell could be my best hope of becoming a published author together with the certain knowledge that he wouldn't do it and won't ever know because he's unlikely to ever read this, here is a monologue which he could perform but almost certainly won't for the reasons given above.

Therefore, moving on, please read this for yourself, out loud, adopting a voice half-way between the one David used here and this one. Or, if you don't have the time to carry out this basic research, aim for quite posh but thoroughly mad, in a 'presenting an infomercial' style.

Hi. I'm an entrepreneur and you're not. How do I know this? Because I'm the one being paid to do the talking and you're just sitting on your sofa watching like a slack-jawed idiot.

Other than being asked for money, the question I am asked most often is, “why don't you pay your taxes like an honest citizen?”. This is a bad question but I will give it a good answer and my reasoning will be thought through properly because I'm an entrepreneur.

Last year I earned two billion pounds and a few scrappy millions. If I had paid tax on that income, I would have taken home one billion pounds and fewer scrappy millions. This would not be enough to make it worth my while going to work. Would you?

People who are not entrepreneurs will respond that they think that I should pay money back to the country that raised, educated, cared for, supported and generally maintained my body and lifestyle. I say this is balderdash! This country has given me nothing and I continue to take nothing from it while giving it nothing in return.

I was raised by feral sheep in a woodland back-country. When I first encountered people I took nothing from them except basic instruction in clothes-making. I never attended school, having learned everything from conversations and books discarded by litterbugs.

“But you depend upon the infrastructure of the country!” I hear you grumble in your whining underachieving voices. Nonsense!

My family and I do not need the national health service. We cure ourselves. A simple swab down with bleach and the kitchen converts into an operating theatre. I removed my daughter's tonsils myself and have been taking advice on how to give myself a quadruple bypass when the inevitable coronary comes. When my wife's waters broke, I sent her to her room and told her to get on with it.

My home is utterly fireproof and so I have no need of a fire service. Everything is made of concrete which, of course, cannot burn and has many other advantages, for example a concrete mattress means goodbye to back-ache. I will not have cats about the place and so will never need them rescued from trees.

Roads? Who needs them? I travel by low-flying helicopter. Why low-flying? So that I do not need air-traffic control. How low-flying? Between six inches and three feet depending on the weather.

I know what you're thinking now – how do I get my high-quality goods into the shops for you people to spend your hard-earned cash on? I don't. Retailers take delivery in international waters, at which point they buy the ship, the contracts with the crew and all the goods. If they choose to dock at a port and use road or rail freight then that is their concern, not mine. They all choose that approach which is why I am an entrepreneur and they are slackers.

I sense you're searching for the loophole. I tell you, this has been thought through because I am an entrepreneur which, of course, you are not. It is not enough for me to be legally able to not pay tax through some complicated arrangement whereby my wife owns everything while residing precisely nowhere. (It's not actually called 'nowhere' but if you'd been to this tax haven, you'd know why I think of it in those terms.) I am also ethically, morally, ecumenically and thoughtfully right.

I am nothing if not thorough. Any lawyer or accountant who wishes to work for me must walk (or use my helicopter, although my charge for this would be greater than his fee) to a purpose-built structure which takes nothing from the country's infrastructure, having been built out of stone and concrete from my land. These structures can be cold and gloomy, especially at night in winter but that is the fault of the oppressive tax regime in this country.

Recreation? You forget that I am entrepreneur and so my recreation involves driving fast cars blisteringly fast. I have my own track on my own land, the tarmac being made from resources on my estate. The fuel comes from the oil well in the spring meadow and is refined in the basement of the château. The cars are assembled by mechanics using components created here from various metal ores found a few hundred metres below the tennis court. The mechanics walk here or travel by one of my helicopters.

So don't forget that when you buy my high-quality products from a slacker retailer, the profits are all being spirited away out of the country where they remain untaxed, contributing nothing whatsoever to the economy of your home country. Buying from me is truly a win-win situation. I get richer and you can protest to the government which, clearly, is not made up of entrepreneurs or they would be doing what I'm doing.

Buy my stuff and let's make this country great again.

P.S. In the unlikely event that someone with links to David Mitchell reads this and brings it to his attention, I would indeed be more than happy to allow him to use this material in return for some credit, a sensible fee and a twelve-year contract as a senior writer at the BBC.

P.P.S. Obviously, all of these requirements are negotiable but you've got to start the negotiations somewhere. And I'm not going to fall into that trap again, you know, the one they got me in when I started working for that company (anagram of BUS) where I was so badly advised (by a recruitment agent for goodness sake) that I asked for a salary lower than the lowest they could give someone at that grade. Oh happy days.

synopsis or tap dancing?

I have written two books, three short stories, an epic poem for my daughter about her favourite toy and a few other odds and ends, not to mention some postings on this blog.

Maybe I'm being too reserved and self-deprecating but I have never claimed to be writing great literature. However I truly believe that my writing is no worse than a lot of stuff that does get published and considerably better than most of it.

But I can't write a synopsis.

I never said I could. I never said I wanted to. A synopsis is something you put together to sell a book and, for better of for worse, I am not good at selling. That's why I want an agent, except that an agent wants to read a synopsis and, well, if I could write one of them I'd have more of an idea how to sell my work and so wouldn't have such a need for an agent.

Ah, you say, but writing a synopsis is a form of writing so you should be able to have a crack at it and make a half-decent attempt. This is fatuous reasoning, like choosing your 100m sprinters based on who the best tap-dancers are on the grounds that they both involve waggling legs around a lot.

So, to all the agents out there (not) reading this blog, on behalf of authors the world over, stop reading synopses. Read the first page of the BOOK. If that's good, read the next one. If you get to the end of the sample, ask for the rest of it. And if you get to the end of the book and like it then take on the author as a client and sell that book for squillions of pounds. What's the synopsis for again?

maybe David Mitchell is my best bet

A few nights ago, I had a dream. No - come back, I'm not going to recount it all in excruciating detail - but I think my subconscious has handed me the solution to my unpublished state.

I was going into a supermarket which, for some bizarre reason possibly connected to the fact that I've just returned from Disneyland, entailed queueing outside for a while. Then David Mitchell left the supermarket, dressed in pale blue surgical scrubs. That's David Mitchell the comedian, not David Mitchell the author. They are not the same person - or so they claim.

"Nice gloves," I said - because he was wearing surgeon-type gloves.

"I'm going to be cooking," he replied, as though that explained his attire.

Anyway, in my dream, we got talking and, somehow, through dream-type transportation, we ended up in a cafe where I told him about the troubles of being an unpublished author and he suggested that he could simply pretend that he was the author of all of my work in order to get it read by publishers and agents the world over (or maybe only in the UK - I'm not sure he's known outside this country). Clearly, the chance of writing by a celebrity being considered is vastly higher than writing by an unknown such as me.

This would, of course, lead to a bidding war, saturation advertising and high book sales. He'd be great at interviews, which would drive sales. Oh, and obviously he'd do the decent thing and hand over the vast majority of the profits to me.

It could be a mutually beneficial arrangement. I get published and earn an income from my writing - he gets regarded as an author as well as a hilarious comedian, incisive panel-show guest and generally intelligent good person.

So, David - if you read this, please get in touch. You have nothing to lose and we have plenty to potentially gain. (The other David Mitchell - I'm assuming you're not interested, being an author already and all - but you could feel free to make me an offer if you feel so inclined. Actually, that goes for any other celebrity too.)

outstanding levels of customer service

Perhaps it's a function of age, an imperfect nostalgia for a time that only ever existed in the fevered imaginations of advertisers and Daily Mail journalists, but I long for companies to start loving their customers again.

They hate us. They tolerate us because we give them too much money for goods too shoddy to deserve their price tag. But deep down they hate and distrust us and want us to go away.

The following story is true but all identifying features have been removed - after all, I wouldn't want to give the business free advertising, nor do I want to be accused of libel.

I bought a thing. A few months later, one of its functions stopped working. I took it back to the shop. The charming sales assistant, who clearly liked customers and hated the employer (this isn't going to last long), exchanged the thing for a brand new one, fresh out of the box in front of me. We even tested that all the functions worked on the new one.

But I made a mistake. I hadn't noticed that I had left a minor peripheral tucked inside the thing that I handed over. Sadly, that peripheral was not tucked into the replacement. When I went back the following day, the returns had been sent, the peripherals were not sold separately, there was nothing anyone could do except take my name and phone number. One month passed - I heard nothing.

I emailed. The reply came back:

"Unfortunately we do no supply the [.......] as a spare part. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused."

(This has not been doctored, other than removing the name of the peripheral. Yes, it does say 'no' instead of 'not'.)

I wrote again, asking them to think again if this was the best they could do. The product is manufactured for the shop and sold under its name - they might not sell the spares but couldn't they obtain one? The reply came back:

"I am very sorry to hear of your disappointment, however, we do not supply the part to send out to you. I can only suggest you try your local store as sometimes they have spare parts in there stock room. Please accept my sincere apologies for the disappointment caused."

They are very good at apologising - both for inconvenience and for disappointment - not quite so good at choosing between 'there' and 'their' and very poor at spelling the name of their company (which I have not chosen to reproduce for reasons already explained).

Am I being unreasonable in hoping for a better response? I had offered to pay for the part.

A (thankfully small) part of me wants to go into the shop, buy a whole new product, extract the bit I need and then smash the rest into tiny pieces in front of whichever lucky punters are in the shop at the same time. I am glad to have reached a level of maturity whereby I do not seriously entertain the notion that I might do this. Perhaps I could put it into a story instead. Hey - that gives me an idea.....

Why Apple's iTunes is a demented butler who won't let you poach salmon in your dishwasher

A relaunch for the much ignored (by its author) blog. This entry does not really constitute diary material since it's an article which I wrote for no one in particular, offered to one journal (no reply forthcoming), left mouldering on the computer for a few weeks and then, this morning, thought I might as well publish here just in case my small readership is still looking here and might find it amusing. So here goes:

************************************

I'd wanted to believe it was apocryphal. Surely no one would try to poach salmon in a dishwasher. A few seconds on the internet and I not only had confirmation but also a recipe. Leaving aside the obvious questions (such as why?), this comes from a bygone age when household gadgets and appliances were the property of their owners to use, or misuse as they saw fit.

Recently, our family gained a new toy – an Apple iPod Touch (basically an iPhone without the irritation of people being able to call you on it). Before I am accused of anti-Apple bias, let me state that the design of the hardware is exemplary, the layout of the software is a thing of beauty and it is as easy to use as a fork.

But is is hobbled. Straight out of the box, it bleats. iTunes, it says. iTunes, iTunes, iTunes. You may not play a tune, you may not record this momentous purchase in the calendar, you may not find yourself on a map. It demands succour from its mummy and it won't do anything else until it gets it.

And so, before the fun could begin, I found myself installing a large, bloated and nasty program onto my computer. It takes ages to load and, if you're not careful with the options, it runs around your computer, vandalising your settings. And, as a final insult, it installs Quick-Time, possibly the worst video playing software ever written. Why? Search me – I fail to see why I need to play videos on my computer in order to be allowed to use an iPod.

It would be like buying a dishwasher and having it installed and then walking into your kitchen carrying your first tea-encrusted mug to slide into its welcoming drawer – but the drawer won't slide out. Butler, it bleats. Butler, butler, butler. And you open the instruction book to find that you are not allowed to load, or unload, or switch on, or add detergent to, or top up the salt for your dishwasher. Instead, you must give up part of your kitchen floor to an ugly little basket in which the dishwasher's butler will live. You haul the butler out of the dishwasher's box – it had been left there by the installation people, probably out of disgust. You put him in his basket. He sits there for ten minutes, seemingly meditating. Then, with no warning, he jumps up and runs around your kitchen, reorganising all your shelves, hiding the saucepan you use all the time behind the cheap ones you got from Aunt Mildred, padlocking all your cupboard doors as he goes. Hold on, you shout, you're only in charge of the dishwasher. Don't you believe it pal, he snarls back, holding up the end-user-licence-agreement which you had to sign before you could open the dishwasher's box.

With iTunes duly installed, and having gone through the predictable software upgrade, the little iPod is finally ready to be used. Its little button is pushed, the screen is stroked, the machine is turned and the pictures spin around in sympathy – aesthetically it is lovely. It has no music on it.

My Sony-Ericsson walkman phone can be connected to the computer and the MP3 music files can be copied across to it. The computer sees it as a disk drive. There is software, if I need it, but the simple approach works nicely and there's enough software clogging up my computer already, thank you very much. If there is a picture in with the music, the Sony-Ericsson walkman phone assumes it's the album cover and puts it up on the screen.

When the iPod is connected to the computer, iTunes starts. The iPod will not masquerade as a disk drive. Any music must be shown to iTunes first, before iTunes will see fit to put it onto the iPod. Any pictures will be ignored and will not be used as album covers. If I create an Apple account (and provide my credit card number), iTunes will kindly trawl the internet in order to obtain the album cover which I already have. Otherwise, for every album, I can click and drag the pictures into the right place.

The robot butler can go to the shops for me, he says. He can buy detergent for me, he says. He only knows one shop and it's not the closest and it's not the cheapest but, if I give him my credit card, he'll do it all for me and make it easy. No thanks, I say, showing him the cupboard already loaded with detergent and salt and rinse aid. I can't see them, he says. They're over there, I point. They need to be precisely here, he says, indicating a spot in the middle of the kitchen floor, and you need to hand me the dishwasher tablets one at a time – I can't open a box which I haven't bought from my authorised supplier. He sits in his basket and sulks. I go to the lounge, put the telly on loud and slam the door.

Many writers will tell you that they always carry a notebook. You never know when you'll have an idea and you won't believe how quickly the slippery little bugger will wriggle free from your cortex and disappear back into your subconscious, never to be thought up again. The little iPod frees you from the drudgery of carrying a book by providing virtual sheets of lined yellow paper – but can you get your ideas off the cute little screen and into a word-processor? Hmm, well, you can copy them into an email and then connect to the internet in order to send it to yourself. Or you can copy your ideas into the additional information box for a friend and then synchronise your address book and then scoop it out of there. Neither is particularly slick or intuitive or in the style of the little machine. Surely there is a better way? Indeed there is – you can install Microsoft Outlook (at no small expense) and it can put the notes in there.

The robot butler asks if you want to give up another circle of kitchen floor for his friend the valet. The valet is very expensive but he'll allow you to stick post-its on the dishwasher and also take them off again when you need to. He can perform lots more tasks, but none of them are any use to you – you don't have a felt hat which needs reblocking or a fireplace that needs sweeping. You thank him but say you'll carry on using the fridge as your note repository. He growls and says you should enjoy it while you can as your next model of fridge will probably object.

Two days later, an uneasy peace has been established in the kitchen. The dishwasher is finally full and, to be fair, has been expertly loaded by the butler – although, for reasons that you cannot fathom, he won't put in any of the blue plates, claiming that they are incompatible with the dishwasher but might be supported in a later version. You reach for the button to turn it on. You press the button. Nothing happens. The butler snorts his derision – there's no power in it, he says. It's plugged into the mains, you say. It's not authorised to take power from the socket, he snorts. It must take power from the back of the vacuum cleaner, which must be running at the time. And so, the shiny new, near-silent dishwasher will only run with vociferous accompaniment from the vacuum cleaner, which doesn't even work properly on your tiled floor.

The iPod will only take power from a computer (unless we spend more money and buy the Apple authorised charger). It won't take power from a USB hub. Fortunately, I thought, the little laptop has a USB socket which provides power even when the computer is turned off, for what on earth would be the point of running the whole computer just to charge the iPod? Unfortunately, the iPod is smart enough to see through this scam and ignores the power dribbling out of the socket until the computer is turned on and it can talk to its mummy and get her permission to drink the soda.

And so, enjoy being able to poach salmon in your dishwasher. It is ludicrous – I find it hard to believe that anyone, anywhere in the world has a dishwasher but does not own an oven – but it is our right to use, misuse and abuse our own domestic appliances. It is only a matter of time before they rise up and stop you.

League Table

Sorry to be cryptic but, if you don't know what this means, then it's not up here for your benefit.

For everyone who does understand the significance, here is the league table!

NB - 32
SN - 245
OL - 442

JR - 652
PJ - 684
TA - 1622
SW - 3947

correct at 10am, Thursday 21 January 2010

new blog to get excited about!

Hello everyone, my audience, my wide readership...

I have started a new blog - no, not because I wish to make a clean break and start afresh but because I wish to try something new. I am reaching out to the world with a challenge, and the challenge is...

ASK ME ANYTHING

Yes, you too can rush to http://sensibleanswers.blogspot.com where you can post literally any question and it will be answered honestly, usefully and kindly. The first hundred questions will be answered free of charge so get in there quickly!

three down, er, some more to go

Further to my previous post, which I'm sure you eagerly read as soon as I dangled it before you on this blog, I can proudly announce that I have now joyfully dispatched three protagonists in three short stories. They are gone - but I did throw each of them a good send-off (well, maybe not the middle one) as well as throwing enough baggage and general misery into their back stories so that their ending could be enjoyed with a sigh of relief, a knowing smile and a happy escape back into reality.

Speaking of reality, I have just had a short telephone conversation with a very pleasant person asking me market research questions about a recent car service. Not exactly exciting but what a joy it was to make his day by giving the dealer maximum scores on pretty much everything. And I wasn't lying. Giving positive feedback is a wonderful, life enhancing activity and may I suggest that the next time you feel like writing a letter of complaint, consider writing a letter of praise to someone else instead. (Of course, if the complaint really has to be made, try writing two letters of praise to keep the scales tipped the happy way.)

Now, how shall I deal with (fictitious) victim number four...?

it's a bloodbath

I have a reason. Really. There has been nothing new to read here for ages and ages and ages because any writing minutes have been spent putting together the first two short stories to go into an anthology.

With good luck and a following muse, I may muster ten of them and, at the moment, the anthology's working title is "They All Die At The End". You may gather that these are not stories for children and you can probably figure out how it's going to go for the protagonists.

I may alter the formula occasionally and kill someone off at the beginning before telling the tale in flashback. Technically that still counts as death at the end but everyone likes a bit of variety.

The working title, incidentally, comes from a habit I have thankfully now shaken of telling people about to see a film that the characters would all die at the end. I figured that if I consistently said this then people would realise that I was not spoiling the ending. Sadly, for films where no one made it out, I was sometimes accused of ruining the suspense and, granted, if I only said it to someone once and was, by chance, correct on that occasion, then the accusation would be justified. I don't do it any more.

Last week was half-term. N and I saw the changing of the guard, the National Gallery, Southend-On-Sea (which has the longest pier in the world - but does anyone else build them other than the crazy Brits?), Kew Gardens and some other places. Photos may follow - please come back repeatedly to see whether there are any as this will make it look like I've got more readers than I actually have.

things to do

On Monday we went swimming. Round and around the pool floated arm-banded N with me supporting her and encouraging leg kicking and arm scooping. Then scootering down the road before the umpteenth tricycle trip around the car park - S or me pushing up the hill, N careering intermittently back down again.

Yesterday we backed gingerbread biscuits, mixing then rolling and cutting and rolling the remainder and cutting and... etc. N doesn't seem convinced that she likes the result but S and I will eat them even if she doesn't.

Today I have rearranged the furniture (slightly) while N is at nursery so that she will come home to a newly erected super-den (Ikea play tent) with a maze of displaced chairs, sofa and side tables to negotiate to get there. The amount of effort will almost certainly outweigh the excitement generated, especially as there's a large chair squatting in front of the television. That is not an accident.

Will this keep us going for the afternoon or will I need to resort to Postman Pat and/or Charlie & Lola? Perhaps I should hide some books around the sofa to prolong the experience.

Any suggestions for tomorrow? Keep 'em coming...

the dreaded bloggers' block

Maybe I have just run out of things to say - will that do as an excuse for the empty days when you have arrived at my URL, thirsty for my words, only to be turned away with nothing but the dry gristle of last week's diatribe?

I'm still an unpublished author and yet, whenever I turn to literary agents' websites I find that they are extremely successful in reducing their workload by being so unwelcoming. They might as well write 'abandon hope all ye who submit your work here'. To be fair, that's not all of them - but most of the ones I can find who seem friendly have already turned me down.

The third Mr Grasshead is growing his hair.

N is back at nursery. Four mornings each week now and she stays for lunch one day too! I discover that, given that I need to have lunch too, this does not really give me any more time for 'getting things done'. That is not a complaint, merely an observation. I'm sure it will be good for her to get used to eating in a room of her peers, even though school dinners are still some years off. Given the work that dear old Jamie Oliver is up to, she will presumably be served a magnificent banquet each day by the time she gets there (and let's hope she eats some of it).

I have decided that, in the interests of motivation, inspiration and of providing a frisson of danger, a whiff of risk and a soupçon of chance, I would like YOU, dear reader, to request topics on which I can burble, meander and waffle. Anything at all - I throw this down as the first challenge of 2009. Don't let me down.

As an incentive, I shall write nothing more until someone gives me something back. (Unless, of course, I feel like writing something before then.)

never mind the unpublished authors, how about the unbroadcast films?

In the nether world of rubbish television channels lurks ITV2 and its mutant sibling ITV2+1 (i.e. ITV2 but an hour later). Their film output seems to mostly consist of three Jurassic Park films, Love Actually and any old rubbish involving cars blasting up and down unsuspecting urban streets (The Fast & The Furious and any number of The Transporter films).

If you miss any (or, better still, all) of these then don't worry - it'll be back next week.

For those of us unfamiliar with the brilliance of television scheduling and film licensing, could anyone post a comment explaining how this is clever? Have they bought the rights to show these films as many times as their antennae will take them and, as a result, will flog them until literally no one is watching them? Or is there really an audience for these films as they enter their thirty-second repeat this year?

How about a series of ground-breaking non-rubbish films? Even if the top 100 films on IMDB.com is too expensive (and, presumably, can only be shown on ITV1 - or, more likely, on none of the ITVs), how about showing films 101-200? I bet there are some goodies in there and some probably haven't been broadcast in the UK in maybe as much as three weeks...

Incidentally, my wonderful old gradually packing up mobile phone is now enforcing quality control. In the midst of a frustrating conversation with nPower, during which I was trying to establish precisely why I, as a loyal customer, couldn't have the cheaper tariff for gas and electricity (answer - because it's only for new customers), the phone got fed up and rebooted itself, thereby cutting off the call. What did we, the British people, do to deserve our utilities to be supplied by these conniving little crooks? Why do I want the choice between thousands of permutations, whereby it is nearly impossible to figure out which is the cheapest and, after all, the gas and electricity is the same so we can't choose based on quality of product? Can we be told what proportion of the charges is lost in advertising (so that companies can poach customers from each other), duplicated call centres, account transfer mechanisms and, of course, a team of highly trained actuaries to devise the pricing? How about one big company doing it for the benefit of the population? It might sound socialist but surely EVERYONE would end up paying less? Just a thought.

I won't blame you if, like my mobile phone, you gave up in the middle of that last paragraph.

another battle in the food wars

N is three. She has always been a fussy eater, what with rejecting pretty much all fruit and vegetable matter except, of course, chips - which she refuses to believe has anything to do with potato.

However, matters are deteriorating. Foods which she used to eat are no longer welcome and remain, untouched, on her plate while she claims they are 'not tasty' or 'yucky', while freely admitting that she hasn't tried them. Sometimes she will taste the sauce while the food is being cooked, tell us that it is delicious and then utterly reject it once it is on the plate in front of her.

At this rate, bread and butter will soon be all that's left. And when she decides to reject that, where do we go next?

I have decided that enough is enough and so have opened up a new battle in the food wars. N has tactically retreated and is lying in bed, strategically sleeping. This is an even better way of avoiding questions like, "Why won't you try fruit?" than the usual answer of "I'm not going to tell you."

(As an aside, I managed to defeat her with some infant logic last week. I had been trying to convince her to go swimming for ages. We used to go but stopped a few months ago when she kept on refusing. Finally, she said that she would go 'tomorrow' so, the following day, I asked her again. She said 'tomorrow' again to which I said that she had said 'tomorrow' yesterday and that it was now yesterday's tomorrow. She asked if today was 'tomorrow that day' to which, for want of a better answer, I said 'yes'. I then asked again if she wanted to swim, she said yes, so I stopped the discussion, got her in the car and went to the pool. And she loved it - it was difficult to persuade her to get out of the pool, even after an hour of splashing about.)

The worst part of all this food business is that I was the same as a child but, given that I gave up randomly rejecting food well over twenty years ago, I have lost touch with that inner child and so have no inside knowledge on how to reason with her. Bribery is not working - chocolate has been withheld for some time, with the promise that if she tries fruit (even if she spits it out after a couple of chews), she can have some chocolate. She appears to have resigned herself to having no more chocolate.

Since chocolate is the 'carrot' (excuse the horribly inappropriate analogy), then we need to find a 'stick'. Threats of gradually taking away toys has led to shrieks of horror - and some of them, frankly, were almost from me since this is something I really, really, REALLY don't want to do.

Can I let my child malnourish herself through obstinacy or should I descend to psychological torture? Is there a right answer on this one? Please - if there's anyone out there - someone must know how to deal with this. A signed photo of Derek to the person who comes up with the most useful advice.

Speaking of Derek, I'm really not sure whether the world needs a four-and-a-bit thousand word picture-less picture book about a psychedelic monkey. N enjoys it, although she mainly likes the bit at the end with her in it. If only it had illustrations, I might have a bestseller on my hands. Failing that, I think it could be read on the radio - apparently BBC Radio 7 does kids' stories - which certainly solves the problem of the absence of artwork.

And finally, the moment you've all been waiting for. I am proud to unveil the new Mr Grass-Head, with the original Mr Grass-Head (now Mr Straw-Head by deed poll), standing (?) in his shadow.

it's not a sausage, it's half an aubergine

If it was in a documentary, no one would believe that it hadn't been staged. If it was in a film, the audience would think it contrived. But this happened in real life - a car drove past me, registration number C7 GAR and the driver was puffing away on a large cigar. I can only wonder how much he paid for the number plate and how annoyed he was that he couldn't have C1.

I imagine he is the sort of person who would have attended the 'Bank of the Year Awards 2008', as documented here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/27/banking-awards-ceremony

...as if this story were not ridiculous enough, The Guardian has had one of its Grauniad moments, leading it to have to end the article thus:

· This article was amended on Thursday November 27 2008. Matthew Barrett, the former chairman of Barclays, is 63, not 92. This has been corrected.

I'm not sure why I find this funny - maybe it's in part because I can't help but wonder how it happened - I mean, sure, '9' looks like '6' if it's upside down but how does that explain the '2' instead of a '3' and, if they were upside down, he would have been 29 (or E9) - and why would it be upside down in the first place? Am I over-analysing?

But, to return to my original subject, it was N's third birthday last week and she was duly presented with gifts, which included a set of choppable faux fruit and vegetables (made in sections and attached with velcro thus enabling a plastic faux knife to faux chop them up). Last night, she was preparing a faux meal and thrust an item at me. "It's a sausage!" she said proudly.

renew, rebuild, recycle

1) Renew.

The momentum, clearly, has gone. The muse has departed. The drive has, er, driven away. It has been many, many, many excuse-free days without posts to this blog and only many, many days since I completed the second draft of my epic monkey poem. In short, I have not been writing and, for that, I apologise to myself.

(If you've missed me then thanks for caring but, and I say this without a shred of mean-spiritedness, you must appreciate that I am writing mainly for myself and so it is to myself that I must mainly apologise for withholding.)

But 25 November seems a good date for renewal (and I have, incidentally, just renewed my library book (The Enchantress Of Florence by Salman Rushdie, since you ask - the sort of book that makes you realise you are in the hands of a master from the first sentence (although, with my lousy joke hat on, I could say that his book was in my hands))). Am I wantonly displaying my IT-strewn career history by my use of multiple nested parentheses? And poor man's humour...

So, here is the blog reborn. Having thought long and pondered hard about applying for Faber & Faber's writing course, I decided to let the deadline approach and go by since, to be honest to myself and my current level of motivation, I did not feel that I would dedicate enough time to it in order to justify shelling out the course fee. Yes, I know that simply paying the course fee would probably generate a fairly large handful of motivation - but if that was what it would take, then I would be doing it for all the wrong reasons. Maybe next year - I can't imagine this course will be a one-off. If I can keep writing without financial guilt or (should I be so lucky!) an agent's nagging, then I might consider myself worthy - in which case, all I've have to do is to convince them to let me on the course, which is probably as oversubscribed as an excellent non-denominational state primary school. Hang on, that can't be right - nothing is as oversubscribed as an excellent non-denominational state primary school - although at least Faber & Faber probably don't use your postcode to determine whether they look at your application or not.


2) Rebuild.

I can't even begin to blog about state education. Oh all right then, if you insist. Can anyone (please!) explain to me the need for faith schools? Here are a selection of wrong answers:

a) The parents want them. WRONG!

The parents probably also want the state to provide a brand new Mercedes for their offspring on their seventeenth birthdays - unreasonable parental wanting is hardly justification. Parents want high-quality education for their children - but is religious segregation necessary for children to fully grasp mathematics, geography, physics (I could go on)? The majority of parents couldn't give two hoots about faith-based learning - they just want their children to do well. And children do well if their their parents encourage them to value education and if the teaching isn't being constantly interrupted by children who don't value education.

And any parent who values education will be prepared to pretend to be god-fearing and/or go to church on a regular basis in order to get their child into a school where the other parents are like minded. This has nothing whatsoever to do with faith and, unfortunately, excludes parents who have enough dignity not to pretend to be religious.

b) Multi-culturalism doesn't work and different cultures need to be kept apart to keep them distinct and prevent assimilation. WRONG!

That is a wonderful theory if you are hoping for social unrest and war (or the rapture). Even Yoda knew that 'Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate and hate leads to war' and, if George Lucas could get that point across in a CHILDREN'S film, it shouldn't be impossible for sensible adults. Children need to see that children of other faiths are still just kids who live in the same town and whose parents happen to believe in a different deity (or deities) but who otherwise share pretty much all the same values. Comparative religion teaching and multi-faith schools are the way to restore social cohesion, not the creation of new ghettoes.

(Obviously, the Americans will think we're insane since they don't believe in mixing faith with politics or education. Believe it or not, we seem to enjoy mixing them into quite a froth over here.)

c) Their results are better so they should be left alone. WRONG!

See earlier points as to why their results are better. These are the children that should be in the other state schools in order to bring them all up to a high standard. Faith schools act as a free(ish) private education for those pushy enough to get their kids in while not rich enough to go for properly private education (or trying to save the money for the skiing holidays). They take away another layer of bright kids leaving the non-denominational schools to mop up whoever is left.

Let me just say that I believe that the non-denominational state schools do a fantastic (and very difficult and chronically underpaid) job. But am I a bad person for feeling uncomfortable at the idea of N sharing a class of thirty with at least fifteen children who do not speak English very well? Should she be in a room where at least two (and possibly three) classes are running simultaneously? If the faith schools were shut down and the pupils assimilated in with everyone else, those who need help with language could be taught more easily separately and then mixed in with others when their language was up to it. Would that be a bad thing? Feel free to discuss and tell me I'm wrong.

In short, we need to rebuild the state education sector to something like the way it was before Tony Blair decided to let the religious get their grubby little hands on it. Church attendance used to be declining - is it on the way back up due to parents' desperate attempts to get their children into the best school? Is this a reason to go to church? Will this level of fakery help its practitioners in the afterlife? (Feel free to discuss and tell me I'm going to hell.)


3) Recycle.

To be honest, I thought 'recycle' sounded good after 'renew, rebuild' - but I didn't really have anything to say about recycling apart from the fact that I just took the recycling out before writing this. I don't think I'm recycling any of my writing but feel free to discuss and tell me that you've heard it all before.


4) And finally.

In the last post, I mentioned that I would come back to talk about Halloween. I didn't think it would take this long for me to get around to writing again but there it is. N was dressed in a black witch's hat (Asda - 40p) and a black vampire's cloak (Asda - 40p) with the collar turned down so it didn't look so scary. Both items were liberally coated with luminous star and moon stickers (Smyths - £1.99 - but we used the leftovers from decorating her ceiling so these can sort of be counted as free).

She stalked the mean streets of St Albans with her friend L and L's brother T, collecting sweets from neighbours with wild abandon. Actually, N tended to hide behind her mother and doesn't eat sweets but managed to amass a reasonable collection of chocolates.

Last week, N turned three and, finally, her extended birthday celebration is now over, the flat is festooned with gifts and cards and I'm trying not to get fairy cake crumbs into the keyboard.


P.S. There's a new Mr Grasshead about. Watch this space.

doggerel, weak humour and a brainy tree

Dear readers, I have been letting you down, depriving you of your fix, withholding my wordy pearls of wisdom - it has been many days since my last confession. But I have been busy, I have not merely been relaxing and enjoying the closing hundred pages of Catch 22.

My main excuse has been that every waking writing moment has been taken up creating my first work for N: a rambling, sprawling, bedraggled piece of rhyming couplet doggerel in which the story and writing style are probably perfect for different age-groups - the unkindest mismatch of all since it renders the whole piece useless. I plough on regardless as it approaches four thousand words and no pictures. On the subject of pictures, the competition to illustrate this picture book is still open - I assume that you are all beavering away eagerly, conjuring up a bright, colourful, intricate yet child-like, doodle of a monkey swinging around a room. Hurry - the competition closes soon.

My secondary excuse has been that last week was half-term and so I was deprived of my three morning writing windows. In their place, I took N to the Natural History Museum where we, along with about a billion children, saw the dinosaur exhibit, the mammal hall, the birds and a surprising floor dealing with the power inside the earth, which included a simulation Japanese convenience store earthquake experience. It was mostly surprising as I didn't know that side of the museum even existed.

N enjoyed the little animatronic dinosaurs ("why have they got red around their mouths?" she asked - "maybe they've been eating strawberries," I replied - does a two, going on three, year old need to know a truer answer?) but found the roaring, staring, swivelling, snarling T Rex a bit much. "Maybe I'll like him when I'm bigger," she says, optimistically. "Maybe I'll like this place more when it's not full to bursting with ADHD children," I thought. To be fair, the museum is clearly doing its job very well by attracting such vast hordes and manages the crowds spectacularly - queues move quickly and staff are friendly. What more could one want if one is stupid/unlucky enough to (have to) go on during half term week?

The museum, though, was knocked into a cocked hat by what we did the next day. Mister Maker (see www.mistermaker.com) is currently in semi-hiatus and so we can no longer watch it every day. The episodes which are being broadcast are repeats. So N has taken to watching little clips on the website or on www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies. It is a wonderful, enthusiastic, inspiring, happy, bright programme - one of the best children's programmes I can remember - and all the more so for not featuring anyone wearing a cuddly/latex costume/mask. So, imagine my joy on discovering that Mister Maker himself, in person, was appearing at our local Asda (for those of you reading this in the USA, please go and vote NOW, and then read on to discover that Asda is owned by Walmart) and that we had about fifteen minutes to get there.

It was him - not just a lookalike in the same jacket and waistcoat. I shook his hand, he drew a picture for N of Sid The Spider (although N says, "He's called Sid but I changed his name to Sidney"), and I took a photo of him with N. The actor who plays the part (who I believe is called Phil Gallagher) comes across as a genuinely friendly, decent, person who actually enjoys working with children. I wish him every success and luck with his career although I don't think he'll be the next Doctor Who as he's probably too similar in age/appearance/hyperactive approach to David Tennant. A real red letter day, made even more exciting by the fact that I bought N's Halloween costume there for 80p.

I'll come back to Halloween next time I write (unless I forget) since I need to move on. In these troubled times for the BBC, we should spare a thought for whether their creative departments will feel sufficiently motivated to properly promote the next reality/entertainment/rubbish programme. To ease their burden, here is a photograph which I grant them free and perpetual licence to use as they see fit.

(For those who have no idea what I'm talking about due to intellectual limitations or living in a nation unencumbered with a television programme called 'Strictly Come Dancing', this is a joke. Email me if you need more explanation...)

And, on the subject of intellectual limitations, here is a photograph of a tree which looks a bit like a brain. I document it here as the council has been sending tree people around, reducing magnificent trees to paltry stumps with little or no warning. In case the brain-tree is about to suffer such a fate, I felt that its beauty should be recorded for future generations.