I'm asking you for something
Please share this. That's the whole email, really.
For the past few months, Maria and I have been working on an absurd side-project — trying to get a television show made. It’s called The WriteOff, and it’s a show about books.
The idea is this: Eight bestselling authors, a villa on the Spanish coast, seven days. They’re put into pairs, in most cases with someone they’ve never met, and each pair has to come up with and write a 20,000-word novella before the week is out. We film all of it — the plotting, the arguments, the panic on day six. Once the stories are written they’re published together, readers read them and vote for their favourite. Best story wins. Baking has a show, sewing has a show, pottery has a show. Books don’t, which is clearly an oversight that someone needed to fix.
The back story: Some years ago Maria t
ook the kids to Spain for half term and left me at home dogsitting. I randomly decided to see whether I could write a whole book before they got back. That became Killing Kind, which quite a few of you will have read, because I’ve been giving it away free ever since. To my mild annoyance, people often tell me they like it more than the novels that took me two years.
Somehow the show idea came from that — the realisation that it’s perfectly possible to write something worth reading in just one week.
Anyway, the original plan was to make it ourselves, funded by a kickstarter, but we learned that TV is crazy expensive, so the plan/hope is to get a television company to make it instead — Amazon being the main target. But we’re told TV wants to know an audience exists before they’ll properly consider a new idea.
That’s what the website is for. It’s a summary of what The WriteOff is, and a chance to add your name to say you’d watch a show like this. It doesn’t cost anything, and takes about 10 seconds of your precious time to sign. But I’m actually asking for a little bit more than 10 seconds.
I figure I don’t often ask you for anything. This time I am, properly.
If you’ve enjoyed something I’ve written — one of the books, Killing Kind, or even just these emails — then please, please send the link on to one or two people in your life. Book-minded people ideally, but also anyone who enjoys a good reality show (Bake Off, Traitors, Love Island even.) So sign it, and then share it — the easiest way is to use the sharing links on the site itself:
If you can share it I’ll be forever in your debt and hereby promise to do my best to write better books, or to start writing good ones if you haven’t enjoyed any of my efforts to date. Although if that’s the case I do wonder what you’re doing on this mailing list.
Anyway. That’s the ask. The target on the site is 100,000 names, which I’m aware is the sort of number people put on things. So let’s start with 1,000, which feels close enough to touch.
Thank you
Gregg
P.S. A few weeks ago I sent an earlier version of the site and asked you to try and break it. Many of you did, and actually managed to break it! Thank you! It’s all fixed now, and much the better for its experience.
P.P.S. There’s also a Book Club on the site, which is the side project to the side project. Three people with completely different tastes, all slightly related to me, recommend one book each per month. Read it if you can (and want). We see which is most popular and award someone an amazing WriteOff mug. It could be you…
