I'm a liar and I've got salad
Happy Friday!
As you can see, I'm a liar. Or at the very least my past self has less control over my present self than he would like. Because my past self distinctly said that right now my present self would be cycling through the snow towards Bristol. Right now, my present self should be riding through the back roads of Bracknell.
Instead, as you can see, my present self is very much sedentary, watching the sundown from a warm living room on the south coast.
But what can I do - I've made an ENORMOUS salad. Seriously. Don't you ever have one of those days? When you make yourself a prisoner of your own over-zealous cooking?
This salad contains:
2 courgettes
1 whole cucumber
300g mature cheddar
2 red peppers
1 whole broccoli
200g spinach
1 whole sweetheart cabbage
250g cherry tomatoes
6 cooked beetroot
150g green beans
All in all, it weighs about five kilos and I can't leave for my bike ride until it's all been eaten. I'm alone here.
In other news, the opening of my novel-in-progress was reliably eviscerated at Curtis Brown on Wednesday.
Fifteen different sets of educated critique of my work. Fabulous. As you'd expect, there was equal and opposite opinions on particular lines, but also a useful seam of agreement.
However, the most valuable feedback I got was completely unwitting: this is not the opening to the novel that I've actually written. On the basis of my 3000 words, everyone was expecting a riotous satire of modern life as the hero wades deeper and deeper into cult worship.
It's not that. It's not that at all. But maybe it should be...
Salad notwithstanding, the reason I'm not currently cranking through Bracknell and environs is because I'm trying to figure out exactly what I'm writing about and why. On Tuesday, Curtis Brown held a Q&A with two literary agents and a publisher. One of the pieces of advice the publisher gave was in equal parts useless and invaluable:
BE SINCERE
When I asked her to elaborate, she replied that readers can "just tell" when an author was being truly sincere and that she wouldn't publish anything that bore even a whiff of abdication.
But the question of sincerity cuts far deeper than the superficiality of a novel. It asks what I really believe in. What I really really really believe in. What I believe in so much that I'm willing to spend 80,000 words arguing with myself about it.
Sincerity is a fair demand to make of the author. Who wants to read anything so insipid that the creator couldn't even muster the attention to sustain his own passions? I caught sight of the Zac Efron A-Z in the library earlier and felt a pang of sympathy for author Alex Kincaid.
It's one thing sincerity being a reasonable demand for readers to make; it's quite another to bear that weight as the congenitally doubting writer. Was Alex sincere in his gushing (and comprehensive) lionisation of an eminently forgettable Hollywood celebrity?
Credit if you were, Alex. You deserve every penny of your Public Lending Rights (7.82p per loan: not a route to fortune but that's another story altogether).
Will I discover what I believe in? Is it secretly waiting for me in the backstreets of Bracknell?
I hope so. But first I've really got to finish this salad.
INPUT
Five alive.
STAND UP COMEDY: Jordan Brookes was infeasibly good [REVIEW]. I'm already planning to see his work-in-progress for next year's Fringe. Superfan.
RADIO COMEDY: Joseph Morpurgo's Walking Tour: East End. You really must listen to this. It's only 15 minutes, but packs twice as many laughs as most comedies twice the length. "Set your knees to up and get 'em in. Mine's a glass of the pint stuff."
STOIC COMEDY: Andy Zaltzman spends a week living life according to the Stoics. He hurts his finger. Funnier than most Stoic documentaries, more enlightening than most comedy shows.
PODCAST: Alice Little, premiere sex worker at the Bunny Ranch in Nevada, speaking to Tim Ferriss. Why not?
ADVENTURES: Epic walker Leon McCarron gives some get-out-there advice about how to walk really really far on Al Humphrey's blog. December is an excellent month for walking: snow crunches nicely and the cold air means we can meditate on the sight of our own breath.
OUTPUT
Fortune favours the Dave.
Tomsleibhe, Isle of Mull (November)
Meditations on Meditations: Praise & Service, Core Beliefs, Adversity, Love, Change, Retreat, Indignation, Contentment (October, November)
"No one ever died while breathing". Psychedelic Breathwork with Alchemy of Breath (October)
The Most Living: Synopsis (October)
COMING UP...
Foiled is back on the radio. I'm sure you all enjoyed Everything's Kings last week (ahem). Episode 2 (my absolute fave) will be on iPlayer from half six. That's, like, NOW! You've just got time to grab a drink and some salad.
Way back in Spring, I wrote a short audio play for a podcast. It's being recorded next week. Terrified.
London Comedy Writers Pitch Slap. In which dozens of comedy writers pitch their show to a baying audience of fellow comedy writers, with the winner taking home a commemorative certificate signed by The Chairman. It's gonna be so good. Non-comedy writers welcome. Baying required. 12 December in London.
I left the official MARGE in London, so I'm afraid you'll have to make do with the Project Gutenburg translation instead. This is from Book 1, in which Marcus lays out his gratitude to seventeen of his friends, relatives and teachers. Chapter 6 is thanks to his teacher Sextus, from whom Marcus learnt:
...to live according to nature: to be grave without affectation: to observe carefully the several dispositions of my friends, not to be offended with idiots, nor unseasonably to set upon those that are carried with the vulgar opinions, with the theorems, and tenets of philosophers (Meditations 1:6)
Be thankful!
- dc
SALESY BLAH
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