Want to write a book but not sure what to put in it? Here's an idea. Think of something you could do in year and then tell an agent. Trust me, they'll drool. It doesn't matter how dull the thing is (I've just secured a six-figure two-book deal with My Year of Slightly Changing My Cycle Route to Work and its sequel, My Year of Reverting to the Original Route). The important thing is that, whatever you do, it should take precisely 365 days.

If you're stuck, here are some titles for free: My Year As Prince Harry's Double in Helmand Province/As Lindsay Lohan's Lickspittle/On Crack in Riyadh. Just stay away from the cycling-to-work memoir, yeah? There have been memoirs of unlikely projects before (Tony Hawks' Round Ireland with a Fridge; Neil Boorman's Bonfire of the Brands: How I Learned to Live Without Labels; and Are You Dave Gorman?, in which Dave Gorman went around the world trying to find other Dave Gormans), but the new trend is to write up a year's worth of experience.

Here are some. Self-Made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man, by Norah Vincent; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver; Every Friday Night: My Year of Dating Misadventures by Ritta McLaughlin; The Year of Reading Proust; My Year Inside Radical Islam; Give It Up! My Year of Learning to Live Better with Less; A Year Without "Made in China" by Sara Bongiorni; and Life Stripped Bare: My Year Trying to Live Ethically by Guardian writer Leo Hickman (his unpublished sequel, Life in Bloodstained Sealskin: My Year of Living Unethically, is better). There's even an online satire called My Year of Writing This Book About Writing This Book

The latest is My Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, by New York-based journalist AJ Jacobs, which is now being developed as a movie. Jacobs doesn't know what he'll write next: how about My Year of Living Off Big-Ass Royalty Cheques?

"To me, a year is a perfect amount of time," says Jacobs. "I don't want to criticise, but I think Marquez went a little overboard with his One Hundred Years of Solitude. Kind of show-offy, you know? A Year of Solitude seems enough. Just my opinion."