More Conversations With My Agent

Earlier today, I sent this email to my agent. If you’re at all interested, I’ll still be updating this blog – and quite possibly with more regularity – but I’ve decided this project can go and make love to itself. Thanks very much for reading.

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To: Matthew Hamilton, Aitken Alexander Associates

From: Pitching the World

Subject: The End

Dear Matthew,

A week or two ago I promised to send you an email that would be “the best email you have ever read.” This may well not be it. In fact, it may well be thoroughly disappointing. Sometime in the middle of last night, you see, I decided to quit Pitching the World. For real this time. This ghoul of a project has caused a lot of misery and hardship over the last couple of years. It’s led to divorce, poverty, a hairline that can best be described as misplaced and atrophying limbs. I know I always bang on about it causing me to go broke and mad and bald but it really has. As it stands, I’m in a borrowed flat in Surrey with no heating, no ability to pay my raft of creditors and enough food to last until the weekend. Once that goes, I’m screwed.

Screwed, but happy. I’m massively relieved to be abandoning this ridiculous thing. And I have ideas. One idea, is that there could still be a good book to be found based on my experiences over the last two and a half years. It could begin here, in East Horsley, broke and alone and drying out. It could be a cautionary tale about freelance journalism. Or a cautionary tale about seeing things through. I always thought it would be a brave and noble achievement to see Pitching the World out to the end, no matter what. Last night, that thought struck me as foolish. I’d be foolish to see this thing out. The brave and noble thing to do would be to quit now and put it down to experience. Surely that would be a better, more representative book: embarking on something and failing miserably. I quite like that. Plus, I’m not a journalist – certainly not the type of journalist who could have made Pitching the World a success. I’m a lot of things, but that type of journalist isn’t one of them.

So, where does this leave us? Hopefully somewhere not too grim. I’ll still continue to write for a living and have a weekly poker column starting next week. We’ve discussed the possibility of me writing a book about poker. If you still want to represent me, we can discuss that further. It occurred to me last night that I should be writing about the things I enjoy doing. I came up with a list: Drinking, Smoking, Gambling and Making Dinner For My Nan. I can’t see a book in that last one, but I can see something in travelling the world living in developing countries trying to make a living from gambling and the stuff that that involves. I can also see a column along those lines. Once I’ve sent this email, I’m going to spend the night trying to get one commissioned.

Hopefully this email hasn’t led to you smashing up your desk. It’s definitely the right course of action to take though. Isn’t it? Not smashing up your desk, more me giving up. I’m not and never was the sort of man who could successfully pitch to and write for 642 magazines. In fact, I’m going to get that book now and go and burn it in the forest. Or I might just throw it away. If my phone had any battery I’d ask you to call me, but hopefully we can speak over the coming weeks.

With best wishes,

Pitching the World

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A bear going to college, earlier.