Between January 2022 and March 2023 I wrote a sort of memoir entitled "Curriculum Vitæ: a working life story". I'd long had the idea to write a preposterously comprehensive and (if such a thing were possible) entirely honest CV, by way of a "life story" because I thought it might be entertaining and might have artistic merit—and maybe even sufficient commercial viability to render it... publishable.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, none of the seven agents who replied to my emails this spring (nor, presumably, any of the four who didn't) happened to agree with me on that third point.
It's probable too that they doubted my first and second points (because surely, if accurate, they might in and of themselves have suggested the third to be eminently plausible); but agents won't flat-out tell you they think your writing is "crap", because there's really nothing to be gained by their doing so, especially when they know that you know their postal address and everything. Ergo: "I'm not convinced the book is quite what publishers are looking for at the moment"—without the qualification "because it's crap".
Obviously I don't think Curriculum Vitæ is crap, otherwise I wouldn't have written it. And write it I did, and in fact already had, and, thus, still have. I didn't have particularly high hopes for it, of course; and like most creative things I've ever begun, I found it a lot harder to finish than to begin. But I'd always thought the idea was well worth having a crack at. And when it so happened that I found myself sat down at my desk in 2022 trying to write a CV after years of unemployment... well, I suppose I allowed myself to get carried away. I didn't finish it that year. I abandoned it (and the hope of gainful employment) when the weather improved, and there was outdoor work to be done here in Landskeria, and elsewhere. But the next winter I found time to return to it, and while I couldn't quite finish it in the comprehensive manner I'd originally planned (because the moment had passed, and with it the momentum; and it was already in danger of becoming overlong...) I decided to edit the Google-doc to what I considered a readable standard, round it off, and approach some agents. The result of that being as detailed above.
I haven't really written since then, either professionally or otherwise. I still think of myself as a writer; much in the same way I still think of myself as being blond, which I definitely was when I was young. But it's rare that I write anything creative now, and rarer yet that I attempt anything of real substance, as opposed to a few rhyming couplets about dead chickens or whatever (for more of which, see my most recent poetry book). I wrote the first part of a series of fantasy novels years ago, about a thousand bloody pages, and I similarly failed to persuade anyone to publish that; but however much I might have enjoyed that process, the results really aren't much use without the intended following parts, which I'll probably never now write in the absence of a commercial imperative. (Eugh! Imagine having one of those?! Imagine even writing those words, or thinking about them...) With all of this in mind, and owing to changes in my personal circumstances which I won't go into just now because while relevant they also somehow aren't, I have decided to publish the entirety of "Curriculum Vitæ" on this website that nobody ever visits, in instalments as though this was the nineteenth century and I was Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy or one of those lads. And not just some guy with a website.
Because I am very much that. Because I got this website; so now I've got this website, and surely should therefore now use this website for something in order to justify having it. (Sorry: it.) And after all this project was, like most things I write now that I'm beyond the ascendant part of my life, probably for posterity more than anything else; so these blog-posts I intend to post onto this blog will be... actually... not unlike any other given blog-post (micro- or macro-) that I might have offered up unto the ether (or whatever) since the dawn of data back in ninety-ninety-something. They allege, if they do not quite prove, that I exist; that I existed. I can promise little more than that. (That, and that I've changed all your names in case you were about to accuse me of libelling you.)
So I've published the first couple of chapters as blog-posts on this website today, along with the various preambles (this now included among their number). And I will update the list below toward the end of each month, over the next year, with the following two chapters (around what would traditionally be "pay-day"). I don't require anything to come of it; but it ought at least to be an achievable administrative exercise, as the text is already written and only needs putting into the Wix content-management system.
Perhaps at some point I'll get a half-decent microphone and record the chapters as an audio-book, publishing as podcast episodes to Spotify, or something. Maybe I'll successfully reimagine the whole project as one eight-second TikTok. I can't predict the future.
In the meantime, if you'd like to read my "working life story", you may. Chapters will be added as links below, on this page, shortly after they are published. It's probably best read chronologically (but who am I to tell you what to do?):
Curriculum Vitæ: a working life story
Chapter 1: The Paper Round: (approx.) February–July 1998 (Mondays–Saturdays) Chapter 2: The Garden Centre: Spring 1999 (Saturdays or Sundays, but only a few)
Chapter 3: Coming, October 2024...
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