The Week of a Thousand Self

D’Ancey LaGuarde

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night seized with a brilliant idea for a completely different project. The day before, a super cool writer and director asked me to help her punch up a script.

Clearly we are in that phase of the writing process where every part of my brain and fate are trying to hit the eject button because it’s grind time. The bright side for my psychological makeup is that the end of this month is looming close and deadliney so I can hold the course and do the fiddly bits of structure and flow and cleaning up and ironing and stitching down all the golden messy scraps that were great ideas in the moment, chucked into the document, and now need to be selvaged into neat seams.

I’m still on track for my submission date (the manuscript’s due at the end of this month) and will let you know when they let me know re: publication date.

If you want to put your finger on the scales on the distribution side, you can pre-order the book or send friends to buy it here: https://unbound.com/books/the-dancey-laguarde-reader/.

According to all the authors I talk to or listen to, presales are a huge part of the book success economy nowadays, which feels annoyingly like so many industries nowadays - like new authors don’t really have much of a chance to break through unless they’ve got a giant pal onside (nepotism, big agents, money to burn or buy them infinite time etc), or else they have a pre-existing fanbase, easily quantifiable in measurable metrics (three hundred thousand Instagram followers, etc). Seems that way for aspiring actors as well, and in lots of other ‘front facing’ industries.

Which means its funny to think about the place of the traditional make-or-break gatekeepers/fate-makers in this picture; the ones demanding a pre-guarantee of success, covering their arses, offloading risk onto the little man. Either they’re lazy as anything, or they don’t have faith in their own ability to actually make people any more, so they’re doing that free-riding partner thing where they pretend they’re responsible for giving someone success, when in fact it’s the other way round, and the whole thing relies on smoke and mirrors. Maybe both.

My Wild Saturday: Come Be Part Of It

Ok, so Saturday I fly in to London, will do the live salon at Mei Leaf Tea House (at 1pm, rather than midday because I don’t trust the trains). Then I have to dash off for a scheduled scan, (check all’s well with things indoors), then I’ll be doing the Global Pillage podcast before heading to The Live Bugle. It’s a good thing I’m going with a budget airline which doesn’t allow checked baggage, because I don’t think I’ll have time to put my bags down til bedtime.

In-Person Salon (Time Changed)

Note: This has had to be pushed back an hour. Looking forward to seeing you there, though!

Saturday, 16 September⋅1:00 – 2:00pm (UTC +1)

Mei Leaf Teahouse

99 Camden High St, London NW1 7JN, UK

https://goo.gl/maps/x8qfDSJQRX7brjhf6

Global Pillage

Global Pillage is a comedy panel show podcast all about idiom, culture, customs and norms. I’ll be guesting with Abigoliah Schamaun, Zoe Brownstone, Shazia Mirza and Esther Manito

Kings Place

90 York Way, London N1 9AG

https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/comedy/global-pillage-14/

The Bugle: Live

Andy Zaltzman and Chris Addison are two of the best writers of satire I know, and I’m so excited to do the Live Bugle with them this Saturday. I thiiink there are a couple of tickets left.

16 September | 7pm @ Leicester Square Theatre

Tickets: https://www.leicestersquaretheatre.com/the-bugle-live/

Subscriber Drive

Remember, if you would like to bring a friend along to a salon, book club or writers meeting, DM me here on Patreon and we'll organise it. Good people are more than welcome along as a guest to see how great we are together.

Patreon Fun Times

The Google calendar with all upcoming things you can come to is up at the linktree. https://linktr.ee/alicefraser but the next virtual events are below.

Writers Meeting and Workshop

Sunday, 17 September⋅2:30 – 4:30pm (UTC +1)

Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88969986971?pwd=ZGp4b3RIb2NQTjU4UGJ2N2xGL2Y5Zz09

Weekly Salon

Monday, 18 September⋅9:00 – 10:00am (UTC +1)

Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89535052847?pwd=RE56eTZPTjVPejdPd215K3hzT3Ywdz09

And for those that missed the announcement [spoilers for Twist], see the last post that I did: https://www.patreon.com/posts/twist-salon-clip-89054185