Written Off

by Paul Carroll

  If Bronte had one regret about the weekend it was that she wasn’t yet in a position to have any one-to-ones as her work was still at the planning stage. A quote on rejection more applicable to her might have been, ‘Rejected pieces aren’t failures; unwritten pieces are.’ As well as the fabulous insights and tips she was gleaning she was pleased to have met so many interesting characters at conference – this was the real world, not at all like university. Alyson reminded her of a school dinner lady but she was funny and didn’t give a toss about anything. She wondered if Alyson could actually write as she didn’t give the impression she could, but it was great that she was trying at her age. Con, admittedly, was super intense and scary, but his keening desire to make it as a writer was stirring. In all probability James Joyce and Samuel Beckett had been like that, so maybe that’s what it took? Eric – she was sure she’d heard his name somewhere before – was uptight in a different sort of way to Con. He seemed very intelligent, but in a schoolmasterly or priestly kind of way. Did he have the passion to make it as a writer? She couldn’t see that he did. But then it was so hard to tell who did have what it took to be a success, there was so much to it. Back to rejection: ‘You may think that once you have an agent and an editor you’ll never have to accept rejection again.’ The presenter was wearing his sincere face. ‘But you’d be wrong. Because that’s when you’ll be told that your novel would benefit from restructuring, tweaking the characters, refining the dialogue and changing the ending. What do you do then?’ Bronte didn’t like the sound of this. Really? ‘You have to trust the agent and the editor in those cases – they know what they’re talking about. Where your work is good they will make it great; where your work may sell thousands, they will help you sell millions.’ As an unelected official for the agents and editors union the presenter was doing a fine job. Bronte typed the next inevitable quote illustrating this point into her laptop. ‘If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rain.’ Another author she’d not heard of – she made a mental note to look up what books Dolly Parton had written when she found a minute.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  As Eric left the buffet counter his eye caught Con frantically waving at him from the large settee he was sharing with Alyson and Bronte. Eric, hesitantly, took his lunch tray over to join them. Con couldn’t wait to tell him his news. ‘Guess who’s just had a request for a full manuscript?’ He paused for dramatic effect, pointed at himself and then flamboyantly pulled on an imaginary cigar.

  Eric was dumbstruck. This brash Celtic bullshitter, this fairground roustabout, had received interest from an agent? There really was no justice in the world. And as for those pathetic mime gestures – how bloody puerile. ‘Really? That’s fantastic, Con. Well done,’ he said, trying to sound pleased for him.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it. My first session – boom! She actually said she’d been waiting to meet me as my intro was so intriguing.’ Con had already recounted the timeline of his triumph to Alyson and Bronte but he was minded to make sure Eric didn’t miss out on the details. ‘She said my manuscript was fascinating, dark, different and definitely had potential.’ Con was so excited Eric had no doubt that by midnight there wouldn’t be a single soul left on the campus, kitchen staff included, who wouldn’t know that he had thrown a six at the start of the get-an-agent game.

  Eric, quickly losing his appetite for lunch, had no option but to keep teeing up the Irish braggart. Besides, despite his envy, he was keen to know exactly what Con’s work possessed that his was so clearly lacking. ‘What genre are you? You never said last night.’

  ‘I was being a wee bit superstitious last night – you know how it is. What genre? Well, it’s genre-bending to tell the truth – maybe that’s what appeals to her so much.’

  ‘Which agent is it?’ asked Eric, thinking maybe he could buttonhole her later.

  ‘She’s over there, blonde hair, black glasses, but don’t all look at once,’ said Con, gesticulating in Emily Chatterton’s direction. Three pairs of eyes followed his glance. ‘But get this. She’s not an agent. She’s the top editorial director at Franklin & Pope.

  Eric refused to believe that someone like Con could land on his feet like this. ‘But you’re not supposed to submit to publishers; you have to get an agent first.’

  Con couldn’t contain his glee. ‘Usually, yes. But they’ve got this new initiative to discover original, unagented talent – I picked up on it online. It pays to research, you see. I could be their first signing.’

  How on earth had Eric missed seeing that? Adopting his best investigative journalist demeanour he asked, ‘What was it she liked so much about your book?’

  Con, no longer hampered by the need to maintain an aura of secrecy around his work, unloaded. ‘The best way to describe it is as a “psychoactive” novel – it transcends normal genre rules,’ he said loftily. ‘She described it as “high-concept” – that’s what they’re all looking for these days.’ Eric, Alyson and Bronte looked stupified so Con elaborated further. ‘The central character, Coyne, works in a hospital and ends up taking MDMA to get through the night shifts. When he’s really spaced out he spends time in the mortuary and starts up a relationship with a baby boy who’s died a horrible, violent death. So Coyne decides he has to live this baby’s life for him.’

  ‘That sounds really spooky,’ gushed Bronte. ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘A Refugee From The Seraphim,’ said Con, proudly.

  Eric’s eyes widened. What pretentious crap.

  Alyson was curious. ‘How did you come up with a story like that? That’s really unusual.’

  Con was enjoying the interrogation. ‘Let’s just say it came to me in a vision.’

  Eric couldn’t believe his ears. So junkie Con gets off his tits on Ecstasy in order to put up with his crappy job, starts hallucinating and decides to write a bestseller as a result? He should have been sacked from the hospital for a start. What if you had a relative in that morgue with the likes of Con and his Phenethylamine-preoccupied pals in charge? And Franklin & Pope were interested in shit like this? Incredible. How was that going to appeal to women anyway? Did they think they’d found the next Irvine Welsh? ‘You need to keep your feet on the ground, though, Con. There’s still a high rejection rate even when they ask for a full manuscript.’

  Despite herself, Alyson chided him. ‘Don’t be so negative, Eric. It’s wonderful news for Con.’

  Con was feeling magnanimous. ‘No, Alyson, Eric’s right. But I dreamed that this would happen, and nothing, absolutely nothing on earth is going to stop me now.’

  Not to mention anything in the underworld either, thought Eric.

  ‘Well you’re definitely one up on all of us,’ said Bronte sweetly.

  ‘Thanks, Bronte.’ Con looked at his watch and stood up abruptly. ‘Could be two up on you in half an hour – got my second one-to-one now. If you don’t mind, places to be.’

  Eric wanted to strangle the pill-popping porter on the spot. If Con got a second request for a full manuscript that afternoon he thought he probably would. ‘Don’t waste a lucky streak. You should buy a lottery ticket while you’re at it.’

  Con wasn’t listening and certainly wasn’t bothered by Eric’s comments. He had a destiny to fulfil.

  As Con vacated his seat a fellow delegate took advantage of the space. Eric’s lunch hour took an even more unhappy turn as Dylan Dylan plonked himself down.

  ‘Eric – what a surprise,’ said Dylan breezily. His work colleague froze. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’ Alyson and Bronte looked at Eric expectantly: who was this? As Eric appeared to have lost the power of speech the newcomer saved him the bother. ‘I’m Dylan. I work with Eric. It’s great here, isn’t it?’

  Eric knew he was outmanoeuvred. If he refused to join in the conversation he would appear rude and cantankerous in front of his new friends. He grunted ‘Alyson’
and ‘Bronte’ as he introduced his acquaintances to Dylan.

  Alyson took an immediate interest in the Liam Gallagher doppelganger who certainly looked a bit more stimulating than the rest of the fusty male delegates. ‘Are you a journalist too?’

  Dylan smiled. ‘I run the sales team. But we both share a love of the printed word, don’t we, Eric?’

  Eric didn’t look at him. ‘It’s fair to say you’ve always been a fan of fiction, yes, Dylan.’

  Bronte, who had missed Eric’s occupation the previous evening, was intrigued. ‘What newspaper do you work on?’

  ‘The Manchester Chronicle,’ breezed Dylan.

  Bronte was beside herself. What were the odds of that? ‘That’s amazing. My friend’s working there as an intern at the moment. She’s on the business desk.’

  Eric and Dylan were taken aback in equal measure. ‘Julia?’ asked Dylan.

  Bronte almost bounced up and down on the settee. ‘Yes. Yes it is. Do you know her?’

  Both men instinctively recognised that Julia being known to Bronte compromised their ability to carry off a conference persona that couldn’t be challenged. What was going to get back to Manchester about their respective visits to Lancaster?

  Eric piped up first. ‘She’s working for me – I’m the business editor.’

  Bronte shrieked. ‘Incredible. She told me all about you. I hadn’t realised it was you.’

  Eric shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, I hope it was all good. She’s a remarkable young lady.’

  ‘Jules is great. She loves working at The Chronicle,’ said Bronte.

  Eric took the absence of any implied criticism as an endorsement. ‘Well, we do our best.’

  ‘I tried to persuade her to come here with me since she’s finished her book. How cool would that have been?’ Bronte said.

  Eric wasn’t sure he’d caught that last bit right. ‘Julia’s written a book? She never mentioned that.’ Dylan said nothing.

  ‘God, she’s such a talented writer I could kill her,’ confessed Bronte. ‘I’m surprised she didn’t mention it to you when she knew you two were coming.’

  ‘Yes, I’m surprised too,’ admitted Eric, sincerely.

  ‘She was probably just being modest. She is, I find,’ added Dylan.

  Alyson detected something was being left unsaid and changed the direction of conversation. ‘So what do you write, Dylan?’

  ‘Yes, Dylan. You must fill everybody in on that,’ echoed Eric.

  ‘I’m doing a book on my Uncle Danny – he was a big wheel in the music scene in Madchester and I reckon it’s a story people will want to read about.’

  On hearing this dubious announcement Eric decided to press his colleague further. ‘Tell them the title, Dylan.’

  Dylan didn’t miss a beat. ‘Crash The Party,’ he smirked. He looked at Eric inviting him to have another go.

  Alyson recognised two feuding schoolboys when she saw them. She tried to distract them once more. ‘You know I heard a terrible story this morning in one of the groups I was in. Apparently, there was this bloke who was getting divorced, and he’d just finished his novel after two years of work on it. Guess what the wife did? She deleted the file on his computer.’

  Bronte gasped in horror at the prospect. Eric was rather more circumspect. ‘Didn’t he have it backed up? Surely the only file wasn’t sat on his hard disk?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Alyson. ‘But she cleared all of his files and back up as well – beats cutting someone’s clothes up, doesn’t it?’

  Bronte thought she could top this tall tale. ‘Well, at university, a girl lent a story she’d written to another student, and it ended up appearing in the university newspaper under the name of the girl who’d borrowed it – she just stole it completely.’

  Eric nodded sagely. ‘That’s why I haven’t let anybody see my work except my wife.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re not going to get divorced anytime soon, then,’ Dylan quipped.

  Eric sighed – he was finding it difficult to control his irritation.

  ‘You should tweet that story on the conference hashtag, Alyson,’ Bronte suggested. ‘Delegates would love it.’

  ‘Oh I don’t do that Twitter stuff, love. And what’s a hashtag when it’s at home?’ Alyson said.

  ‘It’s a tag that groups messages together – there’s one for this conference. Everyone here is posting on it,’ Bronte announced, surprised that they didn’t know simple stuff like this.

  Eric had already spotted the conference hashtag. ‘Let’s just say if Twitter is a show-off medium,’ he said, ‘then a hashtag is the equivalent of streaking at Lord’s during the crucial last over of an Ashes test.’

  This wasn’t exactly how Bronte would define this most useful of metadata signposts. ‘Well, I find it interesting,’ she said petulantly.

  ‘Seriously,’ said Eric, more to Alyson than anyone else, ‘that hashtag is populated by creeps trying to suck up to agents and the organisers. They re-tweet every post an agent puts out and add their own “witty” comments and agreement. Worse, they “share” what they’re learning here by replicating their conference “notes” to all and sundry. But it’s not about being helpful – they’re just blowing smoke up the backsides of the speakers and shouting out to anyone who’ll listen, “look at me”.’

  Nobody said anything, but they all wondered the same thing: what had got into Eric?

  Alyson broke the awkward silence with another digression. ‘So, who’s got any one-to-ones this afternoon?’

  Eric seized upon the question. ‘Yes, Dylan, you must have some lined up, surely?’

  Dylan looked back at him coolly. ‘Yes. Two. In fact I’d better get going – got one in ten minutes.’ He unhurriedly stood up and sauntered out of the dining room with a cheery ‘laters’.

  Lying bastard, thought Eric, resisting the temptation to follow him to see where he went.

  Bronte also took her departure to attend the ‘Fantastic Fantasy’ workshop that was top of her agenda for the day.

  ‘You didn’t mention you had a friend coming?’ said Alyson. ‘He was nice.’

  ‘How remiss of me,’ said Eric. Then, realising he was acting like a tart again, ‘Have you got any one-to-ones this afternoon?’

  ‘I’m all done,’ said Alyson. ‘They might as well have told me not to bother.’

  Eric realised her news had been overlooked in all the excitement with Con and Dylan. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Surely they didn’t say that?’

  ‘As good as. They tried to be nice about The Moon Pulls on the Tide but that was the bottom line. Apparently my writing is “one-dimensional”, “lacking in action” and “over-emotive”. I felt humiliated.’

  Eric, remembering his treatment from the day before, felt for his new friend. He tried to be encouraging. ‘We have to remember that they don’t know everything. Just because they’re the so-called experts doesn’t mean they’re not guessing as much as we are. It’s a common professional failing – I see it all the time.’

  ‘Thanks, Eric. But I have to be realistic – I don’t think my plan to go mainstream is going to work. They both sort of suggested the same – re-do everything, come at it from a different angle, change the tense, change the point of view and stuff like that. Christ, it would take years to write a book doing all of that. I don’t have the luxury of time – I’ve a living to make.’

  ‘Did you tell them about your writing experience?’

  Alyson shook her head. ‘To be honest, it never came up. They clearly thought I was some deranged housewife with an itch to scratch – they didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell them. What would have been the point?’

  Eric didn’t have an answer to that. What would have been the point? About the same as for the two one-to-ones he had scheduled that aftern
oon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘Have you heard from Eric yet?’ Geraldine was being nosey about how the birthday gift was working out. She and Victoria were demolishing a bottle of white Rioja while the kids rampaged around the Blairs’ Didsbury garden. Eric’s absence had created the bonus of weekend chill time – something that wouldn’t normally have been the case if he’d been present.

  ‘He just called and, to be honest, he sounded a bit fraught,’ reported Victoria.

  Eric seemed to be fraught all of the time in Geraldine’s view. ‘Oh dear. That doesn’t sound good.’

  ‘Where do I start? Well, his one-to-ones were a letdown. He said he had no chance of getting published if the agents he saw were representative.’

  ‘I thought they were paid to be all supportive and encouraging. I didn’t realise they’d be so tough.’

  ‘It seems that they were quite direct. In a nutshell, Eric’s book is uncommercial – not enough people would buy it, so they wouldn’t take it on.’

  Geraldine could see the sense in that. ‘Well, it’s probably a good thing to know that. You can see their point – if it’s not going to make money then it’s not going to get signed.’

  Victoria bristled at this curt, capitalist computation. ‘Possibly, but he’s clearly disappointed. And he said that an absolute toe-rag he’d met had been asked for a full manuscript, so he was very put out over that.’