because quite frankly the actual writing part leaves me cold. I’m someone who needs a damn sight more than a room with a fucking view to make me write five hundred words a day. I mean I’m only human, right? Of course, I figure there will be some royalties by then; even so, the big money – the fuck-off money, which is a really substantial advance against future royalties – is still a way off. Meanwhile I’ve got all these ideas for half a dozen other books down the road. No, really, I’ve got files full of ideas. Sometimes it seems there are just not enough days in the week.’ He grinned. ‘Sorry, old sport. I know that’s not what you want to hear when you’re trying to finish and publish your own book. But that’s just the way it is right now. I’m older than you by a decade, which means that I’m a man in a hurry. I want a taste of that outrageous Stephen Sheppard type money while I’m still young enough to enjoy it.’
Stephen Sheppard was a British novelist who wrote a novel called
The Four Hundred
that, back in 1976, Ed Victor, the literary agent, had famously – every newspaper in Britain had covered the story – sold for one million pounds.
I thought for a minute. ‘There is a solution, perhaps.’ I said. ‘Albeit an unorthodox one in the ascetic, left-liberal world of publishing.’
‘Oh? I’d like to hear it.’
‘At the English bar there exists a practice called devilling, when a junior barrister undertakes paid written work on behalf of a more senior barrister. The instructing solicitor is not informed of the arrangement and the junior barrister is paid by the senior barrister out of his own fee, as a privatearrangement between the two. It’s a way older barristers have of making themselves even richer than ought to be possible. So, why not something similar for you? In other words you could pay me a fee to write one of your books. You give me the plot in as much detail as you can manage and then I do the hard slog of knocking out one hundred thousand words; I give it back to you six months later and you edit the manuscript I’ve provided to your own satisfaction – putting in a few stylistic flourishes to make it truly yours. Or taking a few out, as the case may be. It’d be like what Adam Smith says regarding the division of labour in the manufacture of pins. It strikes me that you’ve always been the one with a powerful – not to say overactive – imagination and that you’re better at creating stories than you are at writing them. Which is where I might come in. In a sense you would just carry on being the creative director, so to speak, and no one need ever know. I can even sign some sort of non-disclosure agreement. Meanwhile, you write the other book; then you hand both books to your publisher in quick succession and claim the balance of the advance.’
‘Go on.’
I didn’t know that I could say very much more about this, but now that I’d mentioned it I rather liked the idea of quitting my job and using John’s publishing windfall – what was left of it – to stay at home and subsidize my own writing; so I was selling it now and selling it with more than a hint of flattery.
‘After all, you wouldn’t be the first to pull a stroke like this. Shakespeare may have had a similar arrangement with Thomas Nashe when he wrote
Henry VI, Part One
. Or with George Wilkins when he wrote
Pericles
. And with Thomas Middleton when he wrote – something else.’ I shrugged.‘Don’t ask me what. But I rather think Elizabethan theatre was a bit like the modern film industry. With one writer replaced by another at a moment’s notice. Or writers stepping into the breach to help someone out with a first act, or a quick polish. That kind of thing.’
‘You know, that’s not a bad idea, old sport.’ John deliberated for a moment. ‘That’s not a bad idea at all. A bit like Andy Warhol’s factory, in New York.’
‘Precisely. I suppose you might even argue
Stephen Sheppard was a British novelist who wrote a novel called
The Four Hundred
that, back in 1976, Ed Victor, the literary agent, had famously – every newspaper in Britain had covered the story – sold for one million pounds.
I thought for a minute. ‘There is a solution, perhaps.’ I said. ‘Albeit an unorthodox one in the ascetic, left-liberal world of publishing.’
‘Oh? I’d like to hear it.’
‘At the English bar there exists a practice called devilling, when a junior barrister undertakes paid written work on behalf of a more senior barrister. The instructing solicitor is not informed of the arrangement and the junior barrister is paid by the senior barrister out of his own fee, as a privatearrangement between the two. It’s a way older barristers have of making themselves even richer than ought to be possible. So, why not something similar for you? In other words you could pay me a fee to write one of your books. You give me the plot in as much detail as you can manage and then I do the hard slog of knocking out one hundred thousand words; I give it back to you six months later and you edit the manuscript I’ve provided to your own satisfaction – putting in a few stylistic flourishes to make it truly yours. Or taking a few out, as the case may be. It’d be like what Adam Smith says regarding the division of labour in the manufacture of pins. It strikes me that you’ve always been the one with a powerful – not to say overactive – imagination and that you’re better at creating stories than you are at writing them. Which is where I might come in. In a sense you would just carry on being the creative director, so to speak, and no one need ever know. I can even sign some sort of non-disclosure agreement. Meanwhile, you write the other book; then you hand both books to your publisher in quick succession and claim the balance of the advance.’
‘Go on.’
I didn’t know that I could say very much more about this, but now that I’d mentioned it I rather liked the idea of quitting my job and using John’s publishing windfall – what was left of it – to stay at home and subsidize my own writing; so I was selling it now and selling it with more than a hint of flattery.
‘After all, you wouldn’t be the first to pull a stroke like this. Shakespeare may have had a similar arrangement with Thomas Nashe when he wrote
Henry VI, Part One
. Or with George Wilkins when he wrote
Pericles
. And with Thomas Middleton when he wrote – something else.’ I shrugged.‘Don’t ask me what. But I rather think Elizabethan theatre was a bit like the modern film industry. With one writer replaced by another at a moment’s notice. Or writers stepping into the breach to help someone out with a first act, or a quick polish. That kind of thing.’
‘You know, that’s not a bad idea, old sport.’ John deliberated for a moment. ‘That’s not a bad idea at all. A bit like Andy Warhol’s factory, in New York.’
‘Precisely. I suppose you might even argue
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