Today has, officially, rocked. A few weeks ago, I mentioned on this site that I was writing a book and was looking for an agent. A friend (who I'd never realised was a writer before - but please buy all his books as I'm sure they're utterly fab.) saw the post and recommended me to his agent. This morning, I had a meeting with the agency. And they want to sign me!
I've wanted to be a writer since I was four. Actually getting a literary agent takes me one step closer to achieving my dream. They said that they're 'really enthusiastic' about my idea (which I'm still not allowed to talk about in case someone nicks it) which was nice. Then again, they're agents, so I guess they have to say that kind of thing.
Now, this does lead to the problem of me actually having to write the book, but as it's non-fiction, it shouldn't be too tricky (unlike all the novels I started and then realised when I got 10,000 words in that I had no idea how to end. Or indeed, 'middle') I've got all the research done so it's just a case of sitting down and writing.
Of course, I'm not repeatedly running the line 'You'll have to talk to my agent' through my brain, inwardly grinning (fuck it, outwardly grinning). No, really, I'm not.
My life may usually be hectic but this week, things reached ridiculous levels, both in terms of work and surreal juxtapositions.
Last weekend, my Dad and Stepmum came to stay. 2004 is turning into a very 'family' year for me, what with getting endless baby pics from my mum, trying to help her develop her businesses and generally spending way more time with her. Seeing my Dad continued the theme. It was ace seeing them - first time they've been to my flat in six years - and we had a lovely, gentle family weekend, talking about childhood memories and life in general.
They left on Sunday afternoon. And on Sunday evening, Tammi, a porn star - the one who's doing it to fund her mum's IVF treatment - came to stay. She was coming to London for a shoot and needed somewhere to crash. As I was interviewing her for a women's mag it made sense to offer her the spare room,. She's a friend of a friend, and I preferred the idea of her being safe with me rather than in some dodgy cheap hotel - with the added bonus that I could do a leisurely interview.
Even though she's only 19, she's really bright and we had a great evening drinking wine, blathering about the industry, men and life. By the end of the evening, I had a new 'little sister'. Couldn't help but wonder at the disparity between the image that people would have, of a sexpert and a porn star on a bed together, and the reality. Rather than having a pervy romp-fest (can you tell I've been writing for the tabloids all week?), we were both wearing pyjamas - not baby-doll style things, flannelette and T-shirt material baggy things - and swapping life stories.
On Monday, Tammi got a load more work and ended up staying for the rest of the week. She's a total sweetie; insisted on tidying the place while I worked, to say thanks to me for letting her stay, and helped me compile a load of research (more of which later). Today, she even got back from a shoot having stopped off to buy me lunch because she was worried that I was working too hard and not eating enough.
She's such a joy to have around that she's becoming my new 'semi-flatmate' using my place as her London base. Suddenly, I can see my male friends becoming much keener to come to dinner. When I introduced her by phone to my lawyer and acountant (because she needs both, and I'm being mumsy) they were certainly more than usually excited at the prospect of a new client.
So, porn star/family juxtaposition was odd enough.
And then there was the breasts thing.
On Tuesday, I had two appointments:
The first: an appointment at the breast clinic to get a mammogram as I've had a lump for a while and they wanted to check it for cancer.
The second: a topless photoshoot for a new magazine on 'Why I love my breasts'
I think the universe had just decided to take the piss. The former appointment was utterly outside my control because it was one of those 'we'll send you a card through the post. Turn up when we tell you or you'll have to wait for another few months' things and the latter had been organised before I had the date of the appointment, and, as they had three of us in the shoot, it would have utterly messed them around to cancel.
Now, having mentioned the 'breast-loving' piece, I should make one thing clear. Whilst I'm not offended by my breasts in any way - particularly now I've found out that they aren't infected with cancer - I wouldn't exactly say I love them. They're just 'there' (and because they're mere fried-eggs, gravity seems to be keeping them in about the same place as they've always been, which is nice.). However...
...a few years ago, a fab girl did work experience for me. We stayed in contact, as I have with several work-experience people. She's just landed a job on a new magazine launch. It's a pilot. She called me up, really stressed because she was struggling to find anyone flat-chested who liked their breasts. She's one of about five people I've semi-mentored who I really rated, and it's her first media job so I wanted to help out. She had practically no time, so I said I'd do it.
Because it was for the pilot, which would only be seen by focus groups.
It was only on the day of the shoot that I found out that it might actually appear on news-stands.
My mother will be so proud. Tammi was (again) an absolute sweetie. She asked if I was OK after the shoot, speaking as a woman with far greater experience of getting naked in front of a camera than me. It was really endearing, getting maternal concern from someone (almost exactly) ten years younger than me (found out she's twenty the day after I'm thirty. Which is a tad scary.).
As it was, the shoot was fine, though I don't think I'll do it again as it's not exactly good in terms of looking professional if the world's seen my tits. Well, not as a journo, anyway.
So, by Wednesday, I'd already had a weird week. I'd also, over the course of the week, picked up four commissions; two for More and two for the Daily Star. This is a reasonable amount of work (and something I was deeply chuffed about) - which took considerably more time than usual because the Star pieces included analysing all the data from their sex survey.
Now, I've done data analysis before; I did a psychology degree so I'm pretty used to it. But that was a fair few years ago. Thus, I'd forgotten quite how bloody dull it is. And how much time it takes.
I like doing the bit where you correlate all the results. But I'd forgotten the utterly mind-numbing process of gathering together the raw data in order to be able to correlate the results in the first place. Cue, me sitting surrounded by the world's biggest paper mountain, with reams of A4 paper, tallying up all the scores and cursing my idea to do a sex survey in the first place.
Luckily, I managed to just about fight off insanity by enlisting the help of my fab Cliterati sub-editor and Tammi. My neighbours must have wondered what was going on. The quickest way we'd worked out to tally the results was piling all the papers together and then going through each question in turn. Anyone outside the door would have heard the following:
"Oral sex, group sex, dogging, bondage, roleplay, lingerie, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes."
Along with much giggling.
The analysis was brought to a (sadly, temporary) halt by people arriving for dinner; two male sex industry PRs joined Tammi, me and another mate who's a phone sex worker. Over the course of the evening, Tammi showed off the copy of Razzle she's in to the (very interested - obviously for professional reasons) male PRs, we swapped stories about everything from bizarre transexual experiences (one of the men) to nude tabloid appearances (also one of the men) to foot fetishism (err, one of the men again) and Tammi kept everyone (err, particularly the men) on the edge of their seats with 'true life' stories of doing porn.
My favourite story was about a bloke she worked with who was rough and did the 'gripping the back of her head' thing rather over-zealously, bashing her head against the bed, while she blew him. He didn't stop when she asked him to (hold with the 'but she had her mouth full' gags, OK) and told her that she should just get used to it, so she got revenge in the next scene. She was wearing a ring with a stone in it. She turned it around so the ring was facing inwards and proceeded to give him a very firm hand-job, ensuring the stone rubbed all his most sensitive parts.
I think she's going to go a long way.
Thursday was a really ace day. My first Guardian piece came out. I was dead excited about it. Sadly, I was also on deadline for three other articles, so I didn't get a chance to buy a copy until 7pm - and had to scour every shop within 20 minutes of the house to find a single copy. This is probably a good thing though, as I was so squeally that I'd have probably bought enough copies to wallpaper the flat otherwise. I was dead chuffed that they'd hardly changed a word of it.
And so, onto today. After finishing all the analysis for the sex survey, I finally got the piece finished. It's in the Daily Star next Monday and Tuesday, and I'm determined to get to the shops at a reasonable hour to buy copies.
I then got a call from the lovely mate who introduced me to his literary agent (as a result of my request on this site, which was cool). They like my idea and I've got a meeting next week, so I'm desperately hoping that they like my sample chapters, sign me up and get me a publisher (without demanding internal organs and 90 per cent of the profits for their cut). Then, all I have to do is write the book.
I'm shattered, but it's been an ace week. I love writing. And life's pretty cool too.
The American Dialect Society Society has an annual conference, held this year in Boston. They pick words "which have most colored the nation's lexicon, or otherwise dominated the national discourse."
I was incredibly pleased when a mate emailed me about this - because of the winning word in the 'most outrageous' category
Winner cliterati: collective noun, feminist or woman-oriented writers or opinion-leaders. 28-38.
This year, the American Dialect Society. Next Year, the OED... Well, that's the plan.
OK, so all hope of me working has now been totally halted. Today, I got Sky Plus installed, courtesy of a lovely PR who offered me a six month free trial. It's ace! Within seconds of the engineer bloke leaving, I was flicking through the options with the same excitement as a four year old on Christmas morning. There are all the movie channels. There are all the porn channels. And then about a gazillion other channels that I'm sure will end up being ignored.
But the channels aren't the exciting thing. I'm still naive enough to be really, really impressed that I can rewind a TV programme *that I'm watching at the time*. And pause it, if the phone goes when I'm watching something. This seems like magic to me, even if it is only really technology. Best of all, I can tell it to record entire series of things that I like, so that there's never again that 'get home from the pub with nothing on TV' thing going on, because I've got a tonne of films and episodes of Buffy recorded into the hard-drive.
Hmm, OK, am very aware that I'm sounding like a monkey for the PR girl, but it really is fab.
TV aside, got a great text message last night.
"Hi, Em. I'm on the front cover of this month's Razzle - and on the first two pages.'
It says something for exactly how exploited women are by the industry that this particular young lady was just as excited about having her pics in Razzle as I am about getting an article in More or the Daily Star. Of course, that's not to say that exploitation doesn't exist, but all the people who I've met in the industry do porn because they can make loads of money out of it and they either actively enjoy, or have no objections about getting naked. And I'd be hard pushed to find a sector of society who was more anti kiddy-porn too.
Then got a call from another porn star mate who's applying for Big Brother and wanted to run his answers on the application form by me. Last year he got down to the last 500 people. I really hope he gets it this year, because it would certainly make for interesting viewing. He's a devoted boyfriend, father and porn star which has got to be a fairly unique combination.
However, the TV remote is beckoning so I really must go and make some lights flash and gape in wonder as I discover all the functions of my new toy.
I'm definitely pleased with how this year's going. Even though it's hardly started, I'm back on the usual writing trail. Today, I got this month's deadlines through from Messagizer, for their 'Sex and Loving' newsletter, which is always fun to write because I have an open brief. Think I'm going to go with a relatively innocent angle for one of them, by writing something about snogging (there are only so many times a girl can use the phrase 'great for G-spot stimulation' without getting jaded - and someone would have to be a truly phenomenal/weird snog to hit the G-spot) No idea what the other one's going to be on yet, although I'm quite tempted to do something on sex and charity, based around Tits out for MS. May be a little wide of the mark for the usual stuff I do for them though, so have to think about it.
Was gutted to be unable to find a copy of the Daily Star for my clippings file today. Actually, that's not strictly true. One part of me went 'Yay, the Daily Star's sold out in every newsagent I can get to within a 20 minute walk of my flat , and it's got my article in it.' But it would have been nice to actually see it.
Got another commission through from More - a 'sex tips from real women' piece. I need ten women aged 18-25 who are up for giving a sex tip and having their pic in the mag, by Monday, so if you're up for it (or know anyone who would be) then please let me know.
And, shockingly, I've even made a start on writing my sex book. Had a call from a mate who offered to put me in touch with their agent, so I'm really hoping that their agent likes my idea. I've got a loose intro and a chapter outline done. Now I just need to write it...
And so, my life continues as normal. Today, I was interviewing an absolute dream of a porn star. (No, not a dream 'cos she was gorgeous - although she was. She was just one of those people that set every journalistic radar tingling.)
To start with, she's only nineteen, which makes her one of the younger women in the (legitimate side of the) business. She's entirely happy with her job and likes being able to show her body off. Add to that, she's bisexual, which is tabloid heaven (yes, I know that it shouldn't be any big deal but sadly, society still hasn't moved on enough for someone's sexuality - if they're not heterosexual - not to be news.) She was more than willing to talk about all these things, which is cool, 'cos I hate the idea of stitching someone up with a story they wouldn't want printed.
But *then* came the absolute beauty of an angle.
She turned to porn to fund her mum's IVF treatment (and her mum's entirely cool about her talking about it.) Well, that and to fund her studies because she couldn't afford to go to college otherwise. Added to all this, she's a really sweet person who's really keen to be written about.
In terms of 'tick all the boxes marked ' tabloid human interest story', she scored almost a full house (OK, so some kind of celeb link would maybe have boosted it further but that'd just be greedy.)
I had another one of those 'my life is weird' moments, when she kept on getting interrupted by calls from male porn star mates, all of whom I ended up blathering to because I'd worked with them in the past. I'm not entirely sure how it is that I got into a situation where half my mates are porn stars or sex industry types, and it's still a little odd. Nice though, 'cos they're remarkably devoid of bullshit.
After that, got home to find an invitation to an 'Erotic food party' that's being filmed for Sky. Not sure exactly what it's going to entail, other than (apparently) eating dinner off a naked woman but it was suitably bizarre a request to be filed under 'could get a feature out of this'. And somehow, I don't think Sky One will be expecting the guests to muffdive on camera.
In other news, it turned out that the four-part feature I'm doing for the Daily Star started running today. Am dead excited because I got a front cover tag (sharing the page with Britney: not something I ever thought would happen) as well as the centre spread. No matter how many times I get a by-line, I still get a buzz from it. And I've got three more over the next three days (cue squeally mode.)
Sadly (well, fortunately really, cos it means I've got work) this week, I can't just sit back and luxuriate in squealliness. I really have got to get on with reviewing this sex furniture as I'm writing an entire positions guide for them, so a full working knowledge of the products in question is required. And then there's all the usual stuff; writing some new erotica, putting together a couple of newsletters and subbing all the latest Cliterati stories.
It's a fun way to start the year.
So, another year has started. No matter how cliched it is, the end of one year/start of another is a great time to 'take stock' and all that grown up kind of stuff. This year, it's been particularly odd looking back; on New Year's Eve 2003, I was still with the ex and was just making inroads into freelance life. Now, he's living with his new bird and I've got a load of regular writing gigs.
There's been a massive progression in my work in the last year, which is a bit mind-blowing (to me) when I think that it's only been 12 months. I now have weekly slots on LBC and London Live. I've done TV stuff for Sky, BBC2, ITV and various cable channels. Some of it even made it past the cutting room floor. OK, not much, but at least I've learned how to use autocue and handle wearing an earpiece.
Highlights of the last year include:
- Being asked to apply for a sexpert TV gig in the states (was gutted that I couldn't get them a showreel in time, so never got a chance to see whether they'd like me or not).
- Editing my first national news-stand magazine
- Landing my first Guardian commission (not sure when it's coming out yet, but will be telling the world once I know).
- Getting a piece syndicated to US Woman magazine.
- Learning about Tantra (strongly recommend it - it's not just seven hours of tedium, promise!)
I've got a fair bit of stuff coming up too. On Wednesday, I've got a four-part series on Sex in the UK starting in the Daily Star. In February, the new Lovers' Guide vid I wrote comes out (along with a documentary on Sky One, which I have to admit, I'm nervous about. Fly-on-the-wall: don't do it, kids.) I've got a set of 'sexual position' cards coming out at about the same time (52 positions on 52 cards, detailing how to get into them, pros and cons and all that kind of thing) And then there are various meetings coming up with mags I haven't written for yet, who are interested in my stuff. It's incredibly exciting for me, that, having wanted to be a writer since I was four years old, I finally seem to be actually doing it. The biggest thing I've learned is that if you want something, go for it. It may take a lot longer that you first hoped (in my case, I had eight years of working on other things to pay my way, whilst trying to build up writing contacts/get stuff published) but persistence really does pay off.
I'm not a big one for resolutions, but one thing that I'm determined to do is write a book this year. Rather than adding to my 'failed novel attempts', I've decided to do a sex advice book. I'm not giving away too many details in case someone nabs the idea but it should be different from other stuff on the market (so if you are an agent or publisher then please feel free to get in contact...)
In other news, I've just got back from having an ace time staying at my mum's. She's got more and more into geek stuff in the last year, and is now running two sites; one selling the dresses she designs and another selling holidays in Devon. It's strange, given that she used to describe herself as a Luddite, seeing her get all excited about the internet. We're hatching big plans for working together, which should be fun...
I can tell that my 30th birthday (in May) is clearly nagging at me,. I haven't got the 'Oh, God, I'm getting old' thing going on, although my grey hairs are becoming increasingly insistent; I just appear to be getting all nostalgic. Had a great time going through old family pics (that I didn't even realise my mum had) and remembering all the stuff that was happening when they were taken. Then, my mum asked me to go through her jewellery box and pick something I liked. Most of the stuff that she's got is stuff she bought at auction, or whatever, as a pseudo-pension. But the one piece that attracted me was an opal and diamond ring. I tried it on and it fitted my engagement finger perfectly. Turns out that it was my Great Gran's engagement ring. Mum gave it to me. Now, I can't help but imagining what my great gran was like, which is strange for me as I'm not really a big family person. I found it particularly weird that we have the same size fingers! Still, it's nice to have a sense of history.
Had a heartbreaking time going to see my Gran who is going slowly 'distracted'. She spent a while telling me all about what my Grandfather was up to; how he was 'tired' but 'still as funny as ever'. Which would be cool, except he died 18 years ago on New Year's Day (requires free registration to read.)
So, another year, more articles to write about shagging and who knows what around the corner. Here's hoping it's more fun than character-building.