‘Writing is a business! (You Schmuck).’

‘Are you lost?’

You have hurried late into Zerena Littlemercy’s class, ‘Writing is a Business! (You Schmuck).’  She is looking at you as if you had slaughtered a goat on the wrong altar. You look around. The rest of the class are staring at you.

‘No, I’m not lost’ you answer.

‘The decoupage class is down the hall.’

‘But I’ve signed on for your class.’

‘Then you have already exhibited your lack of professionalism by being four minutes late,’ says Zerena with the clipped finality of a guillotine.

You consider decoupage. It might be better than writing, it’s just a lot of cutting out with scissors and glueing. Do you really want to be published this badly? You hover between sitting down and standing up, looking all the while at Zerena who appears to have arranged this class between board meetings at Goldman Sachs.

‘Let us resume,’ she says sighing deeply.

Within five minutes the realisation dawns that you have never understood a single thing about being published.

‘Are you the kind of writer who is still drooping around in their dressing gown at 11.30 in the morning looking out of the window, sipping coffee with the pretence that you are writing in your head?’  Zerena asks.

You laugh and then realise that you shouldn’t have. ‘If the answer is yes; ask yourself  a question. If you don’t take yourself seriously,why would anyone else?’

That wipes the smile right off your face.

‘You should work office hours,’  Zerena continues, ‘ Don’t answer the phone, don’t answer emails, the door or anything else. This is your job. You must have discipline.’

Nothing else? Nothing else at all? This  is counter-intuitive stuff. Does she really mean that you should dispense with your vital pre-writing rituals of flicking through catalogues or rescuing drowning insects from the sink? Can she really mean that you shouldn’t re-organise your sock drawer, even when its distressing disorder is disturbing the equilibrium of your universe?

‘You have a product,’ Zerena continues, strutting in her power suit, ‘Decide what it is and market it clearly to the right people. In order to do this you must study the market, read everything you can about publishing trends’.

You would bet your last Credit Default Swap, that before turning to writing, Zerena ran a successful little business selling sand to Saharans.

‘And the best way to sell your novel is to identify your USP.’

Your USP? Perhaps you are in the wrong class after all. Is this ‘Easy Steps to being an Estate Agent’?. Many years ago you remember one of that brotherhood identifying the Unique Selling Point of your house. When it turned out to be, ‘ being within 5 minutes walk of a mainline station’, you had felt insulted.  Now your novel must have a USP. Could you use the same one?

‘Network!’. Zerena commands.

Now listen. You have always been a withdrawn type, From early childhood you have had sociopathic tendancies. This is why you kept those secret diaries of everything you hated, that the psychiatrist made you burn. This is why all these years later, your only effective form of communication is writing. If you could talk why would you bother to write?

Zerena’s class is gathering speed as she name checks the ‘New Trinity’- Twitter, Facebook, Blog.

‘Have you thought about getting yourself a YouTube Channel?’, she asks provocatively.

‘No, why?’, you want to answer, ‘what would I have to do on it? Strip while reading my synopsis?’

‘Have you Googled yourself?’ Zerena raises a perfectly dyed eyebrow into a quizzical parenthesis.

You were explicitedly told by Mother Alphonsus, a kindly soul in a whimple, never to do such a thing, but instead wait until you were married.

Now Zerena hits you with the goods. What publishers want is someone who can be a career writer, preferably in a genre that is easy to sell. They want someone who is articulate, has an easy and engaging manner, an attractive personality and a physical presence that doesn’t make people want to scream.

If you fill this requirement then consider yourself hired as the head of your very own PR company. Now you can go out and promote yourself; be invited to literary festivals and into every alleyway and denizen of the media.

In short,you may have written the best novel of 2012, but if you have the sexual magnetism and easy grace of Quasimodo, coupled with the networking skills of a medievil anchorite and the after-dinner style of a Trappist monk, you may as well forget it. You ease yourself out of your seat and slip unnoticed from the room and down the hall to the next door. Through the glass you see people happily cutting pictures out of magazines with scissors. You sigh and open that door.

The Vestibule of Literary Hell

You are an aspiring writer who, halfway through your life, has woken to find yourself lost in a dark wood. You are in the Valley of the Unpublished. It is dismal and you are terrified at being so alone. You wander until you come to a hill bathed in sunlight. But when you start to climb, you find your way blocked by three fierce beasts; a leopard in the form of a literary agent, a lion in the shape of a publisher and  Mariella Frostrup.

The Shade of Margaret Atwood

They fill you with fear and drive you back down into the sunless wood. At that moment a figure appears. Oddly, it turns out to be the shade of Margaret Atwood and you beg her for help. Atwood tells you that you cannot overcome the beasts that stand in your path. They must remain until a ‘greyhound’ (or Paris Hilton’s enraged chihuahua) comes to drive them back to HELL.  

Rather, by another path will you reach the sunlight, and Atwood promises to guide you through Hell and Purgatory and, ‘ mebbe lead you to Publishing Paradise’.

So, skipping a couple of Cantos; you enter a glass-filled atrium full of specimen trees in expensive pots. People rush past in a mild frenzy.

‘Is this a Walmart Sale?’ you ask in fear.

‘No’, says Atwood inconsequentially, as if ordering a  Chef Salad,  ’This, my dear,  is the Vestibule of Literary Hell.’

‘Who are all these people?’

‘Rejected writers’, says Atwood, chuckling sadly and shaking her head. ‘Their punishment is to follow a banner, at a furious pace, forever, and to be tormented by flies and hornets.’

‘Banner?’ you say, ‘what is this banner?’

‘It is known as Twitter and as you can see, it is advertising a hundred different opinions on how to get published.’

You watch blogs popping up to the right.

You listen to the Twitter people  alternately howling  and shouting witticisms.

The blogs look interesting, you are tempted to read one,

‘These people are nowhere.’ Atwood says, in her inimitable drawl while putting a firm hand on your arm,  ’C'mon I’m taking you to meet the infernal boatman’.

‘No, I’m not ready Ms Atwood,’ you say pulling against her strange gravity. ‘I haven’t yet abandoned  all hope.  I still want to be a tiny bit like you. Surely, there’s still a chance of publication, if only I can find the right course.’ And with one great tug you pull yourself free from her grasp and run to catch up with a group of desperate wannabees, flailing your hands all the while at the flies and hornets.

Next thing you know, Margaret has faded away and you have woken up in a queue for another writing class.

This one is called, ‘Writing is a Business (You Schmuck)’ and is being run by a woman in a severe but sexy suit called, ‘Zerena Littlemercy’.

Reading her promotional materials you find that, for a minor king’s ransom, she is promising to make you exactly what the publishing industry wants. You sign up.  Of course.

with apologies to to Dante Alighieri, ( translator M. Musa)  The Shade of Margaret Atwood, and Mariella who is a cultural institution in the U.K. and not a She-Wolf at all.

Pimp that Plot

Drusilla Lockheart-Leary has given you a grammatical drubbing. (see previous post) Your misuse of the comma was only the beginning. She has dragged you through English grammar by your nose; administering irrigation to your colon and semi-colon,  snipping your dangling participles, and ram-raiding the Oxford comma. This has resulted in you being so terrified of  grammar that you decide not to use any at all. You have begun to write as one afflicted by unmedicated logorrhoea. In short, you have become the Home Counties Kerouac.

The Story so far

You are an aspiring writer whose desperation has forced you into the arms of those that run writing courses. It’ll only end in tears.

Terrified of turning up to Drusilla’s next class with your  grammar-free writing assignment, you linger in a college corridor ,where your eye is taken by a poster for a rival class.

‘Pimp your Plot!’ is run by  writing course magus, Bart Zeidegger. He guarantees you publication in ’10 Kick-Ass Stages’, or your money back. You practically run into his class.

Bart is terrifying in a wholly different way to Drusilla. He’s pepped, he’s stoked, he’s wired. He is either high on Adult Education coffee or he’s been snorting cocaine off a hooker’s stomach. You sit there feeling your pupils dilate while Bart expounds ‘Plot Pimping’.  You learn that you will have to earn ‘the right to write’ and you do that only by understanding ‘structure’.

Today’s exercise is to condense your plot into a short paragraph, in your head.

‘If  your plot cannot be described in one lucid paragraph then it’s not strong enough, if it’s not strong enough,  basically  it’s crap-ola,’  says Bart.

The startled class obediently begin their task, looking as though they are trying to overcome longstanding constipation, then Bart springs in front of an unsuspecting student and asks them for their paragraph. Before they can start he holds up a hand.

‘Make that a couple of sentences,’ he says.

We contemplate this. It’s impossible surely?

‘If you can’t summarise your plot in a couple of sentences, then what is it?’

The strange word ‘Crap-ola’ echoes silently around the room.

‘So how about you giving it a try?’

Bart Zeidegger has turned his bloodshot gaze on you and is lifting a quizzical eyebrow. You think about the plot of your novel. It is  hopelessly complex and multi-layered, taking place in flashbacks with split narratives and multiple viewpoints. It’s a rambling, picaresque mess of a thing,  about a group of friends, who  just keep bumping into each other, over several decades, while stuff happens to them. You know that you can’t say this to Bart. He’ll take you down. You have been working on this novel for three years, and you’ve only just realised that you don’t know what the hell it’s about.

‘Come on now,’  Bart says, ‘ A literary agent would have called in his next appointment by now .’

Bart’s tone is taunting, impatient. He’s obviously ‘coming down’. You’ll  have to think of another  plot. But why, you wonder, does it have to be like this?  You think of the great works of literature; how many of them would have passed Bart’s scrutiny?  You  imagine him asking Proust to pitch  ’À la recherche du temps perdu’  in a couple of sentences.

‘How many volumes Monsieur Proust? I’m sorry, not in this current economic climate, have you thought of Indie publishing?’

Or:

‘Mr Joyce, this day in Dublin, not exactly a plot is it? And can’t you make Bloom a more likeable character?’

Or:

‘Count Tolstoy;  Anna Karenina is hot, Vronsky is a dude, but this business with the train, can’t you make the ending a little more positive?’

‘I’m still waiting.’ Bart wakes you from your imaginings with his  other quizzical eyebrow.

In desperation, inspiration arrives. You look Bart in the eye and begin.

‘ Within the framework of just one day, beautiful Anna, unhappily married Russian aristocrat falls in love with Bloom, a shabby Irishman. Their love must die with the day, until they meet Marcel, a coughing Frenchman, who with the gift of a simple French cake offers them the means by which to escape time.’

Bart looks at you for a long time, then slowly nods.

‘Mmnnn, that’s high concept. Mixed genre. Now, that’s a book I might wanna read’

‘

Undone by the Comma

‘Darling.’

‘Hello Darling’

‘Who is this?’  asks Clyde Darling, glamour-boy literary agent of Mallory Makepeace Associates.

You can’t help feeling that the sixteen hours of self-coaching on how to approach this phone call, have already been lost. Clyde Darling seems to have forgotten you already.  You promised yourself that you would resist saying,  ’Hello Darling’. You have failed.  Eventually overcoming your stammer, you remind him that he gave you his business card only yesterday and suggested you call. You were the winner of ‘Pitch Live’, after all.

‘Oh yes, Hi!’  he says.

Since your pitch won the competition on Saturday night and you became the toast of the ‘Writing Weekend’, (see previous post) you have strained every sinew, to remember what the hell you said. This state of promiscuous creativity was achieved by consuming industrial quantities of  Vieux Billabong; an Australian wine of such rare quality, that it must not come into contact with polished surfaces.  In hopes of regaining your lost brilliance, you have located a bottle of the Antipodean ambrosia and gargled down a glass or two before you made this call.

‘So,’ Clyde continues, ‘what’s your background?’

‘I’m simply, unpublished.’

‘Surely you have a background; won a prize, done an M.A.in Creative Writing, that sort of thing?’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘So, how do you see your writing?’

‘I don’t have a genre, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘But you have a life? Are you a lawyer, a pathologist, or a mad-as-hell police officer?’

‘I used to be a mildly disgruntled civil servant.’

‘Yes’, says Clyde, ‘you see, that’s not an easy sell.’

‘But, I’m pretty sure that I can write.’

‘That’s not really the point.’

Clyde Darling instructs you to send in a synopsis and three chapters. This is not how you thought this phone call would end.

You ponder the possibilities of becoming a lawyer, pathologist or police officer at this late stage in your career. But after the effects of the Vieux Billabong have worn off, you realise that there is another way of playing this Clyde’s way and you sign up for a course called, ‘ Be Published, Like Me’.  This time you are not going to mess up. You have confidence in this, as the course is run by a real writer, the charismatic dominatrix of writing discipline,  Drusilla Lockheart-Leary, whose  motto  ’Give me a cliche and I’ll wrap it round your neck’, was a little alarming but probably just what you need.

  On the first day, you find that the rest of the class are re-assuringly normal.

‘The first thing to say, class,’  says Drusilla Lockheart-Leary, ‘is that a great many people write, and a great many people write exceedingly well, but only a tiny, tiny minority of these people ever get published. Having become published authors, that tiny, tiny minority live or die according to their sales. They will be dropped like an over-heating e-reader by their publishers, no matter how brilliant they are, when they find themselves sliding, clawing at the air, down the Amazon best-seller list.   So, I’m taking it for granted that all of you write superlatively well. The actual question is, YEAH? SO WHAT? Why would anyone publish YOU?’

As Drusilla shouts this, her eye happens to fall on you. You stutter, you quail and then speak.

‘Because I have a unique view. ‘

‘Do you really?’

Drusilla bores through you like the basilisk at the top of it’s game.

‘I write literary fiction.’

Drusilla throws back her head and laughs heartily at this.

‘Literary fiction is it dear?’  she says, advancing on you while waving the writing sample you have supplied. ‘If I were you, I’d forget all that crap until you understand the simple use of the comma.’

Cheap red wine and your writing career

‘Hi, I’m Neville, Crime and Mystery, you must be Women’s commercial?’

‘No,’   you reply

‘Historical?,’  Neville smiles and swills a glass of Australian red.

‘I don’t have a genre, as such.’

‘How does that work?’

‘I’m not sure,’  you say, knocking back the remaining half  glass of   Vieux Billabong in one go.

‘Whoah’, says Neville, ‘shall I get you another one?’

‘Yes, please.’

The Story So Far…

You are an increasingly desperate unpublished writer. You have written a handful of novels which now double up as doorstops and building insulation. You are the kind of person who would rather attempt to channel E. Annie Proulx than seek any kind of practical help. That’s probably why you are failing.  However, you have forced yourself , just this once, to try a ‘Writing Weekend’. (see previous post) Now read on…

The networking session is turning out worse than you could possibly have imagined. You have spoken to no one except a waitress and Neville Crime and Mystery. Around the room dozens of people are circulating, glancing at each other’s name badges and chatting freely.

You have tried approaching lively groups but each time they dissipated as soon as you had drawn near, and left you standing alone again. You spot Barry Gothic Fantasy Horror and in your desperation you wave, but he looks past you and joins another group of laughing relaxed people. You are the proverbial pork pie in the synagogue.

‘Here you are, I got you a large one,’ says Neville Crime & Mystery handing you a small vase of  Vieux Billabong. You smile at him with infinite gratitude.

‘Have you entered the ‘Pitch Live’ Event?’ you ask.

‘God no,’ says Neville, a look of genuine fear passing over his face, ‘that’s strictly for the heavyweight egos, last year grown men were weeping.’

You stare at the vase of  Vieux Billabong; it appears to be empty.

‘Whoah, you may not have a genre, but man, you can drink,’  observes Neville.

It is sometime later and you appear to be standing on a stage in front of a microphone. You become aware of a hand steadying you, looking up you see the wonderful face of Barry Gothic Fantasy Horror. You must have said something funny because the audience is laughing. There is applause. Things go hazy for a while and when you manage to re-focus you see  people sitting behind a table on the side of the stage. You recognize the blazing hair of Glenda Golightly, the despair of Bob Kleinwold and an unknown good-looking young man.  You gasp.  Barry offers you a glass of Vieux Billabong and everything goes blank once again.

You don’t know how, but it appears to be morning. You have no memory of the latter part of yesterday.  Concentrating on carrying a cup of coffee, (you can’t face the croissant),  the cup is taken from your hand and someone pulls out a chair for you. It’s Barry holding the coffee and Neville holding the chair. You sit down. Everyone stops talking and smiles at you. While sipping your coffee and listening to your new writing friends chattering about who they met and what they were offered yesterday, you lean back in your chair and catch the eye of Glenda Golightly at the next table. She smiles, winks and gives you a little finger wave.

‘What happened last night?’ You are beseeching Barry in a corridor outside the dining room.

‘You won Pitch Live’, he says and hurries away laughing.

Before you can run after him you feel a hand on your shoulder. It belongs to a good-looking young man who seems dimly familiar.

‘Hi, my name is Clyde Darling, I’m with Mallory Makepeace Associates.’

You don’t so much answer, as let a strange rasping noise escape from your throat.

‘Darling?’ you say.

‘If you’d like to contact me tomorrow,’  he is handing you his card, ‘I’d love to hear that pitch again and maybe we could take things further.’

As you watch Clyde Darling glide away, you look around for witnesses of this miraculous happening. Passers-by smile and nod as you dumbly mouth ‘Take things further’, over and over again.

‘Epic pitch,’ someone remarks. As he walks on, you recognise the previously grim Sean Splatterpunk. You run after him.

‘How did it go?’  you plead.

‘What?’

‘My pitch.’

‘You won.’

‘So it seems, but I can’t…’

‘What?’

‘I can’t remember a bloody word of it!’

Never Trust Rumours Overheard in Toilets

‘So when my lead character hears the Messerschmitt  dive bombing out of the fog, she throws herself into the slurry heap and naturally that triggers a dream sequence, where she imagines herself speeding full pelt towards Istanbul on the old steam Orient Express, while making tricksy little canapes out of potted meats and pineapple chunks.’

Bob Kleinwold massages his temples, sighs like a man with almost nothing to live for and opens his eyes. He stares at you for a long time without saying a word.

‘Perhaps it wasn’t a Messerschmidt, no, come to think of it, maybe it was a Stuka,’ you suggest, searching Kleinwold’s face for a little softening.

The kitchen timer on his desk goes off and trying hard to smile, he says that he is sure you will find the right agent eventually. You have no option but to leave.

Here you are on the first day of the Writing Weekend (see previous post) and already you have blown your chances with two literary agents.

You have retreated to the ladies to cry a little, when you overhear an excited conversation between two women in adjacent cubicles. It concerns the merits of a young literary agent who is actively looking to build his client list.  His name is Clyde Darling. He is with Mallory Makepeace Associates and  so enthusiastic, you overhear, that he has come to the Writing Weekend specifically looking for debut novelists. At this news you drop your handbag, which you were gripping with your teeth, in the absence of a hook on the back of the door. As the contents of your handbag spill onto the floor there is a small hiatus in their conversation, during which you blush.

‘But he’s all booked up.’ opines the one to the other, ‘no appointments at all.’

Then,  as they are washing their hands,  you hear a new woman enter the ladies and greet the other two.

‘I just nearly followed that gorgeous  Clyde Darling, right into the gents next door,’ she announces.

As they all laugh, you scrabble together the splayed contents of your handbag from the floor and exit the cubicle, then exit the ladies and run straight into the gents. It is empty apart from the door of one cubicle which is closed. You sidle up to the cubicle.

‘I’m terribly sorry to bother you.’

The fact that you are addressing a pair of shoes just visible beneath the door is a little disconcerting, but you remind yourself that this is potentially a man who is hungry for talent.

‘I wondered if you’d look at this.’

You then pass the synopsis of your novel under the door, where a hand grasps it.  Encouraged, you pitch your novel to the shut door. This time, you make a really great job of it. Your pitch is succinct, coherent, interesting. You even have time to explain where you think it might sit in terms of genre and market. You amaze yourself. The toilet flushes and slowly, very slowly the cubicle door opens. You step back, slightly confused by the figure you see emerging  with your synopsis in one hand. He is wearing a pair of red overalls and has a belt hung with workman’s tools.

‘You’re not Clyde Darling from Mallory Makepeace Associates?’

The man shakes his head and hands you back your synopsis.

‘No mate’, he says, ‘I’m Wayne, from maintenanance.’

‘Hallo Wayne’, you say, backing out of the toilet as a group of men enter behind you.

‘It sounds bloody great Babe,’ says Wayne,  ’I'd buy it, not sure about that dream sequence though.’

You thank Wayne and run out into the hotel foyer where you select a bin, in which to throw your synopsis before making a tactical retreat. Lhasa would be your ideal destination, but you could settle for going back to your room, packing your stuff and seeing if you can exchange your train ticket. Tonight you could be lying in your own bed, in sweet, quiet ignominy. That has now become your main goal. But, as you stroll determinedly towards the main door you find your way blocked by  Barry Gothic Fantasy Horror, who informs you that he has booked you in for this evening’s  ’Pitch Live Event’ .

‘It’s OK,’  Barry is reassuring,’ nothing to worry about, all we have to do is competitively pitch our novels on stage, then the audience votes for which pitch should go through to the panel of industry professionals, it’s a great opportunity. I knew you’d love it.’

Don’t Quote James Joyce

It’s breakfast at the Writers’ Weekend on the first day. Already you have made an impression with an agent. Unfortunately the impression you made on Glenda Golightly,  (Valkyrie of London publishing) is that you are a luggage porter. (see previous post) This, it goes without saying, was not exactly what you were aiming for.

You have helped yourself to a croissant and coffee and now scan the room, like a hypnotized rabbit. The agents, publishers and published writers are all sitting cosily together at the same tables.  On the other tables are the aspiring novelists, the writers manqué, distinguished by a slight air of desperation that mingles with the ravaged litter of single portion preserves and spreads surrounding them. You identify an empty chair and attempt to walk confidently towards it. As you edge around a table of publishing industry people, you hear a familiar voice and a lot of laughing.

‘Darling, I can’t tell you how ghastly it was, there was I trying my damndest to get to my room and there’s this lumpen incompetent, trying to pitch her awful novel at me.’

 You don’t have to turn in order to confirm the voice as belonging to Glenda Golightly. Her table erupts in amusement. Everything for you has gone into seventies ‘slo mo’. You stand rooted to the spot, watching your croissant slide Peckinpah-like  off your plate towards the floor.

‘I’m terrified to let the cleaner into my room in case she whips a magical realism trilogy out of her bucket.’  Glenda chuckles to her appreciative audience, then stops, suddenly aware that someone is groping around one of her feet.  She has pinioned your croissant beneath her shoe and as you try to extricate it, your eyes meet. She lets out a gasp. You land the croissant back onto your plate and sit down quickly at the aspiring writers’ table.

They smile at you sweetly.

‘Hi, I’m Chrissy, Young Adult,’  says a woman who, unlike her estimation of herself, looks well into her thirties.

‘Felicity, Womens’  Commercial. Hallo.’

You smile back at Felicity wondering what she can possibly mean. 

A hulking creature  with alarming hair and bad teeth introduces himself as ‘Barry’. You smile back,  grateful for his lack of a mystifying label, ‘ Gothic Fantasy Horror’, he adds. You want to reply by telling him not to be so harsh on himself,  when you are interrupted by the very frail young man sitting next to you.

‘Sean, Splatterpunk.’

‘Unusual name.’ 

‘Splatterpunk is my genre.’

They all look at you.

‘Oh I see.’ At last you realise that they are appending their names with a genre. But you don’t have a genre. You tell them your name anyway and then in a moment of immediately regrettable stupidity, you hear yourself saying,

‘I  forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated consciousness of my race.’

 They stare at you. You shrug and laugh. No one laughs. 

‘Was that a quotation?’ Asks Chrissie Young Adult.

 ’James Joyce,’ you mumble.

  Whereupon they start to chat to each other, leaving you to drink your coffee alone.

Meanwhile the time for your pitching appointment with Ms Golightly has come. You walk to the room where she is waiting, then stop,  calculating that another encounter with this ‘lit diva’ may deal a fatal blow to your nascent novel. You decide to take advantage of her absorption in her smart phone to slink away. 

 At the reception desk you ask if there is another agent who hasn’t filled all their ‘pitching’ appointments. In no time you are fixed up with a new agent. His name is  Bob Kleinwold and you must ‘pitch’ to him in half an hour. You decide to google him at the soonest opportunity. The organiser then informs you that all attendees of the Writing Weekend are required to attend this evening’s ‘ Networking Session’ and checks you off a list.

Fear grips your soul as you assimilate this fact.  You sidle towards the book stall, feeling all your aspirations curdle within you like so much date expired yoghurt. Short of meeting Glenda Golightly again, there is nothing that you fear so much as a ‘Networking Session.’ You have nothing to say to anyone. Isn’t that the very reason that you started to write things down in the first place, because it was a better, easier way to express yourself?

‘You see what you did there.’

You look up in alarm to find Barry Gothic Fantasy Horror standing next to you. He  proceeds to explain that you  alienated the breakfast table with your pretentious quote. 

‘Don’t say you write literary fiction either.’ Barry advises. 

‘I won’t,’ you agree.

He nods, takes a book from a display, hands it to you and then leaves. It is called  ’Network or Die’.

Googling  Bob Kleinwold, the agent, you find that he specialises in  ’Second world war fiction, cookery books and steam train nostalgia’. You are overtaken by a short but intense fore-knowledge of impending misery.