NaNoWriWee - Can Chris write a novella in 30 hours?

UPDATE - My entry won and was published by HarperCollins! Go to the link to the right to buy it for just 99p!

I spent the weekend taking part in the #NaNoWriWee challenge, which had been set by the Kernel Magazine, and supported by HarperCollins as part of their Authonomy/Friday Project brand.

NaNoWriWee is short for the National Novel Writing Weekend, and is somewhat in tribute to the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), during which a ludicrous amount of people try to write a novel in a month. The target wordcount is 50,000, which translates to a fairly slim paperback novel.

The NaNoWriWee challenge was to write a substantial piece of fiction in 30 hours.  A novella, effectively, with a rough target of around 20,000 words.

I tried in 2006, and failed hilariously. While the story I wrote ended up being over 90,000 words, it took me four years. My next attempt at a novel took me two years to write a first draft at 80,000 words. I am not a fast writer. There have been times when writing has been painful and slow and has felt like I’ve been gouging the words out of my skin with my nails.

Writing 20,000 words in a weekend? For anyone reading Magic Falls, my weekly serial, that’s roughly 30 entries worth in one go. For me, this was the writing equivalent of trying to climb a mountain.

As I live in London, I registered to take part in a shared writing space provided by The Kernel, along with 15 others, where they kept us well fed and supplied with caffeine. I chose to do this partially for the social aspect, but primarily because I didn’t trust myself to keep distractions down to a minimum. They had been expecting more people, but that's the nature of a lot of these things, especially when confirmation of places was fairly late. Many more people registered to start online and around 110 people have been reported as submitting finished pieces.

I found out about it on Wednesday, and had a very rough plot by Thursday. It involved a man being framed for murder and it involved the extra sci-fi aspect of a world where nanotechnology injected into eyeballs is an accepted and regularly used thing. I had no ending, and no character names, and I wasn’t sure about what would happen, but I did have a beginning, a middle and a climax. I just didn’t know what would happen at the climax.

I didn’t have much time for it, and this meant that throughout the weekend, I had no option but to go with first instincts. It is difficult to explain how frightening and exhilarating that is.

Halfway through the story, I revealed a major plot point. Almost exactly on 10,000 words.

This wasn’t just a plot point, incidentally. It was the entire thrust of the story.

And I was suddenly convinced that it was shit and didn’t work. The reader would obviously throw the novella aside at this point and declare me an idiot. And if they were reading it on an e-reader, they would blame me for it breaking when they threw it aside and would sue me. I lost confidence in it. Completely.

But I didn’t have anything else. Without this, I had no story. I had another 10,000 words to fill, and no idea what would go into them.

Normally, at this point, I would put it aside, and would think about it, and decide if I needed to replace it with something else, and what else the story could be. Or, even worse, I would just give up on it and move onto something else.

I didn’t have that option this time. Not least because I’d intentionally made clear on facebook and twitter that 

I was doing it. I’d told people that I was going to complete this, and I couldn’t give up on it without having to be public about that as well.

So I had to ignore my fears on it, and plough ahead with the story, trusting in my first instincts and trusting in my ability to make it work.

And I ended up being really quite happy with it. It was freeing, if anything. After all, I could always go back and add more in to build up this plot twist, so it would be surprising, but it wouldn’t completely come out of nowhere.

Have I ended up completely happy with the story?

No. I have at least one section that is info-dump central, although it does allow for other things to happen later, but it isn’t as smooth as I would have liked. I did edit it down a bit, but it wasn’t quite as organic as I’d have liked. On the plus side, I think it is at least interesting info-dump central, so that’s not quite as bad as it could have been either.

I wrote 13,000 words in day one, and on day two I added another 7,000 and then edited and tweaked it all a little. But I’ve ended up with 20,000 words that all hang together pretty well and tell a complete story from beginning to end.

Learning to ignore that little voice in your head that only allows you to commit words to the page when you have complete confidence in them is definitely worthwhile. Sure, you’ll write some things you’re not happy with, but you’ll write some things you end up liking as well.

From talking to other people, the main two pieces of advice that I would impart are:

1 – Don’t read back over what you've just written.

Really, don’t. Not yet. Keep going for a while first, and when you do read back, be aware that you’re going to hate it the first time. The first time you re-read it, you’re going to spot all the stuff that you did wrong, and you’re going to convince yourself that you shouldn't be allowed access to any writing materials. Including chalk and crayon – in case you accidentally scrawl a complete sentence that someone else reads.

The second time? You’re going to start seeing some of the stuff that you did well. It’s primarily that little voice again telling you to give up. Talking of which…

2 – You can do this.

Really. You actually can. Stop listening to that voice. Listen to the one that wants to tell the story. That’s the one that’s right.

The worst thing that happens? It isn’t good.

YOU ARE ON THE INTERNET. You can find terrible writing EVERYWHERE. You will find, within minutes of searching, something that is far, far worse than what you wrote. You are not a terrible writer, and even if you are, you won’t get any better by continually not writing.

So. In conclusion. NaNoWriWee 2013. I enjoyed it, I learned a lot, and as far as I was concerned, it was a success.

Will I do NaNoWriWee 2014? I don’t know. I may. But I’m certainly glad that I did this one.

If my story stands a chance of being published, it will be made public as part of the process. I’ll be linking to it from here.

If it doesn’t? Then I’m just going to post it on here for you to read.

Oh, and if you’re interested enough to read it in the meantime, send me your email address on twitter and I’ll send it to you.

Magic Falls Part Four

Back to Contents

The snow isn't overly heavy, but it does slow my journey down. A tube journey, a train and a bus, until I’m at a familiar block of flats. In the lift on the way up, I regret misleading Nina. She thinks I’m at work, but this is a visit that I have to make, and it would involve too much explaining right now.

When I can explain it to her, I will. I promise that to myself.

I get to a door that I haven’t been to in some time. If I hesitate, I’ll change my mind, so I don’t dare. Trying not to think about what I'm doing, I knock on the door.

"Who is it?" Maria calls from the other side of the door.

"...it's Darren," I say.

"Darren?" She says, and opens the door as much as the chain inside will allow. "What are you doing here?"

I wish she could just open the door. It's going to be difficult enough to get her to talk to me without having a door between us.

"I came to talk to you."

"You never come to talk to me. We sometimes talk online. You maybe sometimes walk wistfully in the park and think about calling me and then don't. Why have you come to talk to me?"

"It's about the lottery," I say.

“What does that have to do with me?” She asks.

“The numbers from ‘Lost’ and ‘forty-two forty-two’?” I say. “Who else could it be?”

She closes the door in my face, and I hear a metallic rattling on the other side. A moment later, she opens the door to let me in.

She looks tired and stressed. She doesn’t wear any makeup, and she’s dressed in black jeans and a black hoodie with the logo of an obscure folk-rock band. This means that she hasn’t been out today, which is unusual for her.

I walk behind her as she makes her way towards the kitchen. She doesn't acknowledge me in any other way than to continue talking.

"They're going to burn me at the stake for being a witch. I'm genuinely worried about that."

"They don't do that any more, Maria." I point out. "Nobody would even know how to do it."

"Rubbish. Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. The small, evil little harbingers of death. They'd set the fire while the rest of them just wait and watch."

"So, it was you?"

"Burning me at the stake would be very bad. I'm allergic to fire."

"That's a yes, then?"

"I don't know. I didn't mean to do anything, but that doesn't count for anything when the Judge decides that my sentence should be death by molotov cocktail. Would you like a cup of tea? If I'm going to die, I should at least be caffeinated."

"A cup of tea would be good," I say. "Maria."

"Yes?"

"How are you?"

She laughs somewhere between nervousness and hysteria. "I'm genuinely quite frightened, Darren."

"That's why I'm here," I say.

"Does Nina know you're here?"

I wish she hadn't asked that. "No, she doesn't."


***************************************************************************

Maria writes the horoscope for a number of websites, and at least two popular women's magazines. We were also in a long-term relationship before I met Nina.

We split up for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that we were better friends than lovers. Or at least, we would have been if we hadn't been lovers. It was too awkward and too difficult for either of us to overcome to the point necessary to be casual enough to be friends. Instead, we drifted into being acquaintances. Although every now and then we tried.

Nina hates her. I thought they would get on, and introduced them to each other. It didn’t work out.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t stand her,” Nina told me later. “I’m sure she’s nice… well, I’m not, actually. That’s the problem. There’s something about her that makes me think she’s sneering at us behind our backs.”

“She’s not like that,” I told her.

“So when you were with her, she didn’t sneer about people behind their backs to you?”

“No. Well… no. She could be a bit…” I wanted to say ‘bitchy’. “…judgemental, maybe.”

“Well, I don’t want to give her more ammunition to judge me. It’s not that I’m being jealous, and I don’t entirely know why I’m reacting to her like this. But I am. Maybe I am being jealous. I don’t know. But I don’t think I can be around her.”

I hoped she’d come around eventually. “Okay.”

“I’m not stopping you spending time with her. I get why it’s important. I just don’t want to spend years pretending to be friends with her.”

I was a little thrown and upset by this, but I didn’t try too hard to bring her round on it. Things were too awkward with Maria anyway.

At the same time, I thought Nina misjudged her. Sure, Maria could be a bit gossipy at times, but she wasn’t the kind to sneer about people behind their backs.


******************************************************************************

“How is skinny bitch?” Maria asks, passing me a mug of tea.

“She’s fine.”

“Is she still skinny?” She sits down on a stool.

“Yes.”

“I hate her. Luckily, she hates me, so she’ll enjoy seeing me burnt. I am glad I can sacrifice myself for your happiness. This will give me comfort when the smoke is suffocating me and the heat is overwhelming me. At least skinny bitch will be happy and Darren’s life will be easier.”

“They’re not going to burn you.”

“They burn witches. They just keep it quiet.”

“Yes, but you’re a white witch, so you’ll be fine.”

“I am not a white witch, and saying so suggests a level of research that begins and ends with The Wizard of Bloody Oz. There’s no such thing as a White Witch, in the same way that we’re not Devil worshippers, because in witchcraft, there’s no such thing as Hell. It’s a Christian concept that got forced onto paganism, and you’re smiling because you’re mocking me, you unspeakable bastard. I know seven ways to kill you with this teaspoon and none of them involve magic and only three of them aren't excruciatingly painful.”

She stops and then stands up and  turns away from me. I recognise her bursts of energy followed by crashing from our time together. I knew she would do this, which is why I teased her slightly. I needed to ride the wave a little bit so that I could get her to actually talk.

“Maria?”

She doesn’t turn around, but says in a small voice “Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not.”

“What happened with the lottery? How did you do it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how it happened.” She is agitated.

“Tell me about it, then.”

“I… it started happening a little while ago.”

“Things coming true?”

“Yes,” she says. “I mean, they’re horoscopes. They’re not true. I know they’re not. I write them, and I make them bloody up.” She grasps the counter, and I see her knuckles are pale.

“When did it start?”

“I’m not sure. I just noticed somewhere along the lines that I was hearing about events that I’d predicted. Nothing major, just… a pisces friend getting a new job the day after I had that written down. A Scorpio meeting a new love interest hours after the print run. Nothing major, but it was happening often enough to be noticeable.”

“You started testing it?”

“Just a little,” she said, as her knuckle continued to whiten. “I started putting slightly more specific details in, and I kept finding out about them coming true as well. It bothered me. It wasn’t something I could control.”

“So you thought you’d push it further?”

She turns around and looks at me. “I put something ridiculous in. Douglas Adams and a TV show and the lottery. And it came true too. And now I don’t know what that means, and I’m scared.”

“Where did you publish it?” I ask.

“In one of the magazines. Not the ones with big sales numbers, thankfully. Nobody’s been in touch, which means nobody’s noticed, which doesn’t do huge amounts for my ego, but I think is probably a good thing overall.”

“More than likely. For the time being, you’re going to have to hold off doing anything with it.”

She nods. “I know. I’m not going to say anything controversial. I’m going to try and get paid work doing something else.”

“This is only going to get worse.” I tell her. “I’m sorry for that, but it is.”

“How did you know?”

“I just know that it’s going to get worse. You’re going to have to let other people in, and talk to them.”

“No,” she says. “I didn’t ask you how you know. I asked you how you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“Knew that it was me?” She says.

“I told you. The geek references. It was obvious. It had to be you.”

“No, I mean…” She stops, and looks at me, scared now. “How did you know that what I was writing was coming true?”

"Ah," I say, and I put the empty mug down.

"Darren, really." She says. "How did you know that all this was happening?"

I look at her, and after a moment, I respond.

“That…” I say, “is where it gets complicated.”

Part Five

Magic Falls - Part Three

Back to Contents

“You don’t know me,” I say. “But you’re right. With everything. You just don’t know it yet.”

“Look, I’m really sorry,” Jack says to me. “But I have no idea what you’re talking about. Do you want a book signing or something?”

“No. But we need to talk.”

“About what?” He asks. He pushes his glasses back, and looks around. He looks more nervous than I’d noticed.

“About the Ravens. You know what that means.”

“It’s a legend. That’s all.” He says. “Some crazy person read the legend and tried to make it come true. It’s not… look, I know the reputation that I have, but this isn’t the kind of thing – “

“Magic’s falling,” I say. “It’s started, and we need to stop it. This is all your idea. You already know it.”

He looks scared. I’ve miscalculated this. “Look, I’m going to go now. It was interesting talking to you.”

I pass him a piece of paper. “Please, just take this.” I say. “Please. It’s got my phone number on it. Call me when you’ve thought this over a bit. You know what I’m talking about.”

He takes the piece of paper, more to shut me up than anything. “Okay, thanks. Take care.” He says, before getting into his car.

As he starts the engine, I say it again to him. “It’s falling, Jack. You’ve been thinking of the Knights. And you’re right. It’s the only way.”

A haunted look crosses his face, and he frowns. “Good bye.” He says, and drives away.

I look down.

The piece of paper is on the ground.

  

*************************************************************************

“I don’t believe this,” Nina says, looking at the television screen as I walk in. “Have you seen it?”

I’d been expecting her to be anxious to have the conversation she’d talked about earlier, so I am somewhat surprised. “Seen what?”

“The lottery news.” She looks at me as if it is self-explanatory, and seems amused that I don’t know.

“What lottery news? I’ve been catching up with someone, so I hadn’t – “

“Four thousand, two hundred and forty-two people won the lottery last night.”

I hadn’t been expecting that at all. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean four thousand, two hundred and forty-two people won the jackpot on the lottery last night.”

I frown, confused. “That’s… strange.” I say, unsure what else to say.

“They’ve not won much each. Nobody seems very happy about it. It gets weirder.” She says.

“How?” I ask, hanging my coat up.

“The numbers were four, eight, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-three and forty-two.“

I stop, my hand still on my coat. I am frozen for a moment, because something is gnawing at the back of my brain. “Why do those numbers ring a bell?” I ask. I leave the coat and walk into the room. Nina is grinning and almost bouncing on her chair.

“You know it, come on.” She says to me.

“Damn it, what are they? It’s not the Fibonnaci sequence…”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It’s not the Valley of Fear or something like that…”

“You know it. Come on. Everyone’s talking about this on twitter.”

“Prime numb…no, of course not.” I correct myself, and look towards the screen, hoping for some clue, but she has paused the screen.

“Lost.”

“What?”

“Lost.”

“Lost?”

“Lost.” She confirms.

“The TV show?”

“That’s the one.”

“I…” She’s right. Nina had been more of a fan of the TV series than I, but I watched parts of it. The sequence of numbers had been part of a plot point. “Wow.”

Something else is now doing more than gnawing at my brain, and is now instead just stabbing it repeatedly and urgently.

“Isn’t it weird?”

“It’s weird.”

“Darren?” she asks.

“Yeah?”

“Are we okay?”

I walk over to her and hold her. “We are, I promise.”

I can feel her relief as she buries her face into my shoulder.

“It feels like something’s going on.” She says. “Something you know about but I don’t.”

“I…” I hesitate. “I’m trying to figure it out myself. Can we talk about it when I’m more ready?” I’m willing to talk about it now, but I really don’t know where to begin.

“When you’re ready. As long as we’re okay.”

“We will, I promise. I just… need to work some stuff out. It’s not us.”

“Okay.”

I stand there in somewhat awkward silence. I’m not sure what to say.

Nina turns back to the television. “It’s so weird about that lottery thing.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Weird.”

That stabbing in my brain becomes clear.. Damn it. Of course. The lottery. It had to be her. I should have talked to her before I spoke to Jack. It wasn’t just the numbers that were picked. She may as well have signed the thing.

I was going to have to speak to Maria.

Damn.



Part Four

Magic Falls - Part Two

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I called in sick to work this week, leading to raised eyebrows with regards to my commitment to my role. This is fair, considering that I'm perfectly healthy and I now have no commitment to my job at all.

I used to. I work in local government and I used to find it an important, worthwhile thing to do. That has now all changed, as my priorities have changed.

I look at my bank account. I do not remember it having quite as much money in, but it isn’t enough to see me through the next year. A few months at best.

It’s a start. I’ll sort out something after that if I need to.

Nina is concerned, and I do not blame her. I've pretended to be ill (indefinable exhaustion and nausea) to work, but she knows that I'm essentially fine. She thinks that I am depressed. That I am avoiding work and that I am avoiding the issue. She’s tried to raise it with me, but I can’t bring myself to talk about it. She knows me well enough to accurately say why I would be acting in this kind of way under most circumstances. Although these are not most circumstances.

Partially, I want to spend more time with her. Partially, there are things I have to do, but every minute I spend with her is a bonus. She is a freelance writer, which means quite a lot of time spent at home, so I’m taking every extra minute with her that I can. When we try to talk about it, though, it feels like I’m already grieving for her.

How can I tell her? I want to. I want to tell her that I know the world is going to end, and that the war is coming. I want to tell her that I know she is going to die in order to attempt to try and stop it happening.

But I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to start telling her. The only way I can console myself for now is the knowledge that there is time. And also the knowledge that things are not happening as they should. The ravens proved that. There may be the possibility that –

No. I can’t hope. I can’t allow myself to hope. I have to figure things out first, and then I can decide if there is anything I can do.

“You’re going out?” She asks, looking up from her computer. She looks upset, and I hate myself for causing that.

“I won’t be long, I promise.” I say. “A few hours or so. I’ll be back before we eat.”

“Darren?” She asks.

“Yeah?”

“When you get back, can we have a bit of a chat?”

“Sure. What about?”

“Nothing,” she says and polishes her glasses. “I just… I don’t know what’s going on.”

“There’s…” I try to complete the sentence and tell her that there’s nothing going on, but it catches in my throat. I can’t bring myself to lie to her. “Of course we can have a chat. I’m sorry for worrying you.”


*********************************************************************************

It’s the first time out of the house in days. I haven’t wanted to start this. If I start it, it means accepting that it’s real, and I still don’t feel ready to do that.

But I have to. And I have to see Jack Whittaker. He’s a writer and lecturer. He writes conspiracy theories of the kind that I used to write off as crap and self-help books that I hate. He fills town halls and small venues with people who will come to hear him speak. He is also the person I trust more than anyone else right now.

He is currently inside a bookshop, railing against the Church and religious belief, in a talk he calls “On the Sixth Day, Man Created God”. I have heard it too many times already. I’ve sat up drinking with Jack while he expounded on the theories behind it, and the anger it causes in him. I’ve given him the title for the book he’s working on that. I came up with it at three o’clock in the morning eating halloumi wraps in a late night kebab shop.

The audience leaves, and I wait in the car park, near his car. I know he’ll be out soon. He finishes signing copies of his latest book, and talks to people for a while. I stand back, out of the way. I don’t want to disturb him, I tell myself. Although truthfully, I’m just hesitant and scared of starting this.

Finally, after forty cold and damp minutes, he starts saying ‘goodbye’ to the last of the people that came to see him. I reflect that I may well have actually made myself ill by standing out this long. I should have come prepared with a scarf, gloves, flask of hot drink and perhaps a hotel room.

He walks to the car, and I freeze. He puts the key into the lock and is about to get in when I finally overcome my hesitation and say his name.

"Jack."

He looks over at me.

"Yes?"

I walk out of the shadows and stand directly in front of him.

"It’s started. The ravens have left the Tower, Jack. That wasn't meant to happen."

The man who I have spent so much time working with, the man who has become closer to me than my own brother, the man who knows me better than anyone other than Nina looks at me, confused.

“Who are you?” he asks.

Part Three

Magic Falls - Part One

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The crowd counts down to the end of 2012. My dead wife holds me and whispers that she loves me.

Fireworks explode all around London as it slips into 2013. We stand high above with the crowds at Alexandra Palace looking down from the north of the city. Before us, the entire city is laid.

The view is amazing, with rolling waves of colour as the city celebrates the new year. It’s actually difficult to look anywhere that fireworks aren’t going off. The city of London has become a rolling wave of colour, like the rain has created a kaleidoscope waterfall spreading ripples of light.

But I am distracted, as I am focused on holding my wife and telling her how much I love her. I do not want this moment to ever end. I can see her, hear her, touch her, and smell her. It has been so long. I kiss her, and taste sparkling white wine and cigarettes.  It is the first time I have kissed her in months.

“I love you too,” I say.

I kiss her again. It has been only months? Has it really been so short a time? It felt longer, but when I kiss her for the second time in months, it feels like she never left. Never died.

I don’t cry. I haven’t cried since she died, and I thought I would cry seeing her again. But it feels like part of me died with her. Or maybe it died later, when we cast the spell that nobody thought could be cast. Maybe that was the cost of it.

I move the umbrella to the side, allowing the rain to pour down on us both. For now, it feels enough like crying to feel appropriate.

“Oi!” she shouts at me, laughing. “You’re going to get us both soaked!”

“I don’t care,” I say, laughing back. “I want to feel every moment of this!”

“Happy new year, Darren.” She says, kissing me again. The rain trickles down our faces against our mouths. I hold her close to me as we kiss. Her body feels familiar against mine.

“Happy new year, Nina”, I say.

“Give me the umbrella,” she says. “I need to call Dad.”

I pass it to her, as she tries to call.

“Damn,” she says. “The network’s down.”

“Call him in a bit, then. Look,” I point upwards. Chinese lanterns float above us, even against the rain.

“They’re beautiful,” she says.

“They’re supposed to carry away your worries and fears,” I tell her.

“They were originally designed for war,” she says. “They were for sending messages. Or signalling. Something like that, anyway.”

“And there I was trying to be spiritual,” I say, and she laughs.

War. There was a word I didn’t want mentioned tonight. Not yet. No matter. There’s time yet.

“I think 2013 is going to be a good year,” she said. “2012 was okay, but I’ve got a good feeling about this one. This is going to be our year.”

“I think so too,” I lie. “It’s going to be a good one.”

We walk back to our house, and I savour every moment that I can. I try not to think about what I know is coming. Her hand feels cold in mine, and that bothers me. It feels dead.

But before long, there is shelter and warmth, and there are hot drinks and talking and sitting together, and then there is more kissing and then there is the bed and we make love.

I have earned this, I remind myself. This time with her. For what I have done and what is to come.

Tomorrow, I’ll have to pretend everything is normal and go to work, and pretend I don’t know everything that I know. Soon, I will have to contact Jack, Maria and the others. But for now, there is just Nina and there is me.

We finish and she lies in my arms.

And then there is sleep.

And then there are the nightmares. Of course there are. I was a fool to think that I could have escaped them. I dream of them all. Of stories and myths and legends.

I wake up before Nina, and I go into the living room and switch the television on. The newsreaders recount the celebrations of the previous night before they explain a much odder and more disturbing news story.

At the Tower of London, one of the Beefeaters was found dead in the early hours of the morning. He poisoned the Ravens and then killed himself.

I did not know this would happen.

And now the tears come, because I am afraid.

I am afraid of what is to come. Of the pain and death and suffering that is in store for so many in 2013.

It is the year my wife dies.

It is the year of the final war.

It is the year that magic falls.

It is the year that the world ends.




Part Two

Magic Falls - an introduction

What is Magic Falls?

Magic Falls is a story I'm publishing on my blog in instalments in 2013. For now, I'm going to keep details light, but they will be added as the story builds. Each instalment will have links to the previous ones for new readers.

Magic Falls is something of an experiment for me, but I'm hoping for good things. Here are the rules I'm setting myself:

1 - Each instalment will be an absolute minimum of 500 words. Most will be longer, and some will be substantially longer, but this is the absolute minimum.

2 - A new instalment will be posted weekly.

3 - No editing previous instalments, except for typos and the like.

4 - I cannot move onto the next instalment until the previous one is completed.


Why 500 words?

I'm hoping it'll be more. It's just the absolute minimum each week. This way, even if my computer breaks down, this is an amount that I can write on my phone if I have to.

Have you plotted it out yet?

Not really. At the moment, it's an idea. I have some thoughts about where it will go, and I do have the end in mind, but nothing is set in stone yet.

Why are you doing this?

To push some good habits, primarily. I tend to write in fits and starts, so I want to make sure that at least once a week, I'm forced to sit down and write something. Also, I'm very curious to see if I can write a story in instalments and build an audience. I think I can, but we'll find out.

Do you welcome feedback?

Definitely. I'd prefer it to be constructive, obviously, but if you have questions - ask. If there's a loose end somewhere you think I've forgotten, remind me. If you have ideas on what is going to happen, talk about it in the comments, on twitter - wherever you want. I want your input and thoughts on this one.

Is it going to be any good?

I hope so. I think I've come up with a strong idea, and there's definitely the potential for a compelling story in it.

The Christmas Plan

The young man carried the newest selection boxes to the display stand, and set them up next to the sun-cream.

The shop sound-system looped back to the beginning of the CD and Noddy Holder shouted out maniacally once again. The young man removed his santa hat and wiped the sweat off his forehead before replacing it.

“Brian?” His supervisor shouted over.

“Yeah?” He shouted back.

“We’re going to need a refill on the mulled wine after this. It’s next to the Pimms.”

Brian wished that there were windows in the Supermarket. He looked at his watch. Nine-thirty at night. He wished he could be in the pub garden with his friends. He wished he could see the sun instead of just feeling the heat.

Slade gave way to Wizzard, who sang that they wished it could be Christmas every day.

Finally, it was too much for Brian. He sank to his knees in front of the selection boxes and burst into tears.

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It was an announcement that nobody expected. It came during the budget statement, and the Prime Minister stood up to support the Chancellor while he made it. The financial situation in the country had become untenable, and something had to happen. Every measure they’d tried had failed. It was time for something drastic.

The Chancellor explained that the build-up to Christmas was always a strong one for the economy. And so, for the next calendar year, Christmas would not be held just once a year as it had always been, but would instead be held every Sunday. Fifty-two weeks in a row.

The live twenty-four hour news coverage ground to a halt due to none of the presenters or producers quite knowing how to react. There was silence across the channels for a full two minutes before the voice of the producer on BBC Live 24 was unintentionally broadcast, screaming to get the fucking Archbishop on the phone.

When they actually managed to get the fucking Archbishop on air, he gave a very hesitant endorsement of the idea, since worshipping the birth of Our Lord was obviously a good thing, wasn’t it? And since more people going to Church each Sunday would be good for the Church, wouldn’t it? It sounded like he was actually thinking it through while answering, since he ended up far more confident about the idea than he did when he started.

Richard Dawkins refused to take part in any interviews.

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The first week it happened went smoothly. Presents were bought, roasts were cooked and churches were attended. TV channels had been given enough notice that a completely new schedule of Christmas specials filled the TV screen throughout the day.

Even the Queen’s speech had a lighter touch than normal, as she giggled twice during it. Of course, for her, this had been the biggest change in her routine that her life had ever seen. A Queen’s Speech during the first week of January was possibly the most mind-blowing thing she had ever been asked to contemplate, but there she was anyway.

The second week wasn’t quite as good.

The Queen forgot her words and froze. Shops ran out of Brussell sprouts, wrapping paper and cranberry sauce, having not had time to order in advance. There was a new status quo and they just weren’t prepared.

The protests outside Downing Street started on the fourth week, although they ended by the seventh week, when it was deemed illegal not to celebrate Christmas, using an extremely old law dating back to the early celebrations of the fifth of November.

At first, it seemed that the law was on shaky ground, however the Government made clear that they would not extend this law to other protests, and it was, after all, only for one year. When the arrests started, the population began to realise that they were tied into it after all.

The TV specials had notably declined in quality, as the lead-time ran out. By June, the Christmas Special of Doctor Who involved Matt Smith in a sixty minute story featuring him fighting no enemies at all, and just having a Christmas dinner with former companions. Although, to be fair, this was actually the most critically acclaimed episode of the entire year, and was seen as a triumph for Stephen Moffatt. The September episode where Matt Smith was ill and spent most of the hour trying not to vomit was less well received.

Suicides reached their peak in May, which surprised statisticians. They’d expected them to keep rising throughout the summer, but they gradually fell off throughout the year. “Maybe it’s the thought that we’ve got less to go than is already done,” one theorist said. Less optimistic statisticians pointed to the overall fall in the poverty rate, suggesting that those least able to afford Christmas had been the main ones to go, but other than the Guardian, nobody bothered reporting that. It just seemed a bit too grim.

The rich had their own problems. Sundays had just become doubly expensive to pay anybody to work, so employment cost a bit more over the year than it had done before.

However, by August, it had to be admitted that, on a basic financial level, these measures were working. Spending had definitely gone up. Savings were being depleted, but profits were up.

The response was taken well by some, but others were devastated. A large part of the population was hoping that it would be judged to be a complete disaster, and the plans would be abandoned. Royalists were also up in arms, as the Queen was visibly more and more distressed as the weeks went by (although by September, she stopped giving a shit and just stared angrily at the camera for the length of the speech each time it was on). There was a small and continually growing group of people who seemed to completely love it, though. The whole thing. Not just Cliff Richard fans and people who owned novelty ‘Keep Calm, It’s Only Xmas’ mugs either. Some people seemed to carry Christmas around with them all year in a way that suited them.

In October (the same month that the murder levels reached their peak), Mary Berry was fired by the BBC, for her diatribe on a live episode of the Great British Christmas Bake-Off, in which she declared she “couldn’t take any more fucking cake. I’m done. I’m done with fucking cake.  I’m done with fucking Christmas Puddings. I’m done with fucking crackers and their shitty gifts inside. I’m done with fucking Mass every Sunday, and I’m seriously tempted to kill the next fucker that sings ‘Silent Night’. No, don’t try and stop me, Sue, I’m going to have my say. There is no God, this is just a sham, and fuck you all.” Paul Hollywood tried gamely to keep the show going with her replacement, Vanessa Feltz, but the magic was generally agreed to have gone. Mary Berry, meanwhile, was offered a job on Channel 4, where she seemed to massively enjoy her new role in charge of the hit show “Mary Berry’s Merry Bally Christmas”, where she was encouraged to rant. Sales of ‘Mary Berry Was Right’ t-shirts suggested they were an increasingly popular Christmas gift.

The strangest thing happened in the third week of November. TV ratings dropped almost entirely, and everyone appeared to spend time with their families and actually enjoy themselves. The crime rates dropped to almost zero, and the overall mood of the nation grew rapidly.

It appeared that the usual point where the serious run-up to Christmas started was actually the point where people started actively anticipating the end of the year. The blitz spirit had taken hold of the country, but it could only have endured as long as people had an end in sight.

The 25^th of December itself was an enormous party, although the nation as a whole seemed to suffer from a metaphorical hangover for the final week.

The 31^st of December was a sedate affair. People nodded at each other when they passed in the street, the weathered and aged faces reflecting what they had been through. Nobody spoke about it. Nobody needed to.

The country had endured and come through stronger. The economy was undeniably doing better, and the boost had definitely helped.

But six months later, it was down again.

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The Chancellor stood up in parliament. His eyes were sunken, like someone who had spent the entire previous night crying.

“I have an announcement…” he began, knowing he was throwing away the next election.