Nanowrimo Winner

But there’s more, there’s more…

[Total word count: 6,992]

Reader, I have been less than honest with you. No, I’m afraid it’s true. I led you to believe that I had an aborted novel lying somewhere in a cardboard box: in fact, I said it was an earlier version of Wenham.

Actually, that much is true. What I concealed from you, what I denied by implication, is that I have three aborted novels lying in cardboard boxes, in various states of non-completion.

So, besides Wenham, there is, for example, The Mallison Institute. This is a kind of magic realist thing in which a young man gets a job at a mysterious research organisation which turns out to be reconstructing the Adamitic language, the real language of which all others are a shadow. Before we get to the end, there are, you know, hippogriffs in the corridors and vanishing elephants. The place is eventually destroyed in a manner which we are led to believe is somehow similar to the fate of the Tower of Babel, and our hero is led away by the stern girl in riding boots who has been manning the reception desk throughout but turns out to be the reversionary heir who gets all the money if the Malison Foundation should ever be wound up. Obviously some element of wish-fulfilment there.

Anyway, I came across Mallison this morning as I happened to be looking at the back of the wardrobe, and I read a bit of it, which I should not have done. The thing is, I expected it to be terrible, and it wasn’t, not exactly. I expected it to be embarrassingly, toe-curlingly bad, which is what I remember from the last time I looked at it. In fact, it seemed like a pretty decent effort, not meant to be too serious or anything, quite a good piece of work as far as it went and all that. But a good piece of work by someone with no talent whatsoever. Whoever wrote this thing I was reading knew in theoretical terms what they were doing, how a plot went, what characters were. Their grammar was lovely and they clearly had a fund of quirky general knowledge at their fingertips. They just couldn’t write novels. This, superficially, had the essential components of a novel: but it was no more a novel than a scarecrow is a human being.

Now I know I’ve said that ’wrimo isn’t about quality. But between you and me, I was hoping that I would be writing something good.

Now I needed to look at the other abortion lying in the back of the wardrobe, so I hauled it out. This one exists in three different versions, and has no definite title. It’s sort of science fiction. This community of people sets off in an interstellar space ship, the first ever built: they suffer all sorts of interesting social and engineering problems, and finally only a couple of survivors make it to the target planet. When they arrive, they find there is a huge welcoming party: they have taken twenty years on the journey, and just after they left someone invented faster-than-light travel, so instead of being pioneers in the trackless waste they are arriving at a colony which is already more than fifteen years old.

Reading the different attempts at this one I remembered the different characters I had come up with for the protagonist: Horne the cynical drunk; Dr Samow the beetle-browed scientist; Estrella Morgan the glamorous singer. This was a much more reassuring read: it really was absolutely terrible. I felt the encouraging conviction that I could do far better than this steal over me.

However, in one respect the old SF thing was appealing. One of the versions had been intended as a sort of interstellar Decameron: as the ship plunged along to its destiny, the characters would tell each other stories. I even had in mind a version of the story about the tub which appears in the original Decameron , echoing one from hundreds of years earlier in Apuleius or somebody. It’s also one of the sources for The Miller’s Tale in Chaucer. In my version the tub would have been a Morris 1000. My little work would thereby have been bound into a chain of fabulists bouncing stories to each other across the centuries. Rather wonderful, really, and humbling in a good way. If I’d written it.

Anyway, it suddenly struck me that the method of having the characters tell each other stories was ideally suited for Nanowrimo. Instead of having to carry on with a single narrative thread, you could just sit your characters down when the inspiration ran out and have them recite a different story. It was tempting.

But, you ask, you’re doing OK aren’t you? Your word-hoard is fully up to scratch? Well, yes, gentle reader: the old fecundity is standing me in good stead so far. The problem is, I’m running out of plot. I have a plan, you see, which divides the story up into 25 sections of 2,000 words each. I’m up with the word count, but I have already got through the first eight sections of the plot, and I’m speeding up. At this rate, the story will peter out at about 8,000 words. I urgently need something else to happen, and for the life of me I can’t think what.

So one option is that Lady Jane Pimsey, in the snug bar of the Bull, suddenly turns to her faithful chauffeur Charlie and says,

“Charlie, did I ever tell you that story about a Morris 1000? It’s from Apuleius or somebody?”

“What, Apuleius, milady? I ‘ope as ‘ow you’ll pardon me presumption, yer ladyship, but I wonder as whether I could ‘ave the temerity to prevail on you to relate that particular yarn, if you have a moment, that is?”

“Why most certainly, Charles. Now it seems there was a miller, a rich swindler that gestes helde to borde…”

Pretty desperate, huh? Option 2 is I go back and do a new beginning based on the old SF thing, and then when we’re all settled in the interstellar ship, Estrella Morgan says;

“Say, this reminds me of that old story about the Wolves of Wenham. You ever hear that story, Charlie?”

“Oww,” says Charlie, for the collapsed bulkhead is crushing his legs, “If you could teyyull me thayyut story, Mayyum, maybe it would eyyse mah sufferin’ a tayyud. It’s mah layyugs, Mayyum. Mah layyuggs huyyut reyyul bayyud.”

“Sure, Charlie. I guess there’s this Miller guy, rich more than somewhat and a real gonoph, that has guests to board…”

No, it’s not going to work, is it?

Julie and I made up, by the way, after the bottle imbroglio. I grovelled, I acknowledged my shortcomings, I expressed gratitude for the input she had offered which would contribute so much to my personal growth. I stopped only just short of putting the bloody wine bottle back on the table.

“Come on then,” she said, “Let’s go and have a drink.”

“I need to knock out another thousand tonight,” I said, sorrowfully, “You go on without me.”

She went.

OK, so this is later, and she’s back. She ran into Geoff and Maureen. Apparently Geoff is already up to 6,000 words, and steaming along. He let Maureen and Julie read some of it, on condition that they were strictly not to tell me about it.

“So what’s it like?”

“Well, let’s say I don’t think you’re going to have much competition so far as literary merit is concerned. A lot of heaving bosoms and slapped thighs and sort of ho, varlet stuff, you know?”

“Heaving bosoms? It’s saucy? Erotic?”

“No, the word that actually comes to mind is pantomime. Alright, that’s all you’re getting. But he does seem to be turning it out at a cracking pace. Mind you, he’s taken today off to do it.”

“What!” I exclaimed, “He’s working on it full-time? That’s cheating!”

“I don’t see why, really. Anyway, remember – it’s not a competition. How many words have you done?”

“Oh, 5,000. But I’ll have it up to 6,000 before I finish tonight.”

She kissed me encouragingly.

“Well, I need my sleep. I’ll see you later.”

I’m going to stick with Wenham. What I’ve realised is that so far, just as I initially forgot to describe Julie to you, I have given no details of any of my characters. We don’t know whether Lady Jane Pimsey is blonde, brunette, or redhead: petite or tall, fashionably or casually dressed. Actually, she is Diana Rigg from the Avengers era, but I can’t really say that. Or Wenham. What’s Wenham like? What would Thomas Hardy have made out of it? Or Dickens? How about this…

The village of Wenham in Norfolk partakes abundantly of the celebrated topological properties of that county, which is to say it is flat. The main street is known as Market Hill, but whether this reflects some slight and long-vanished declivity of the surroundings in former times, or is a manifestation of the sly humour of the inhabitants, would be difficult to determine: in any case it is now as level, and conforms as closely to the altitude of the surrounding country as the most Euclidean of cartographers could demand.

The mighty church of St Botolph, which seems far larger than the population of the village could demand, claims an origin in the twelfth century, though the most substantial part of its substance dates from the fourteenth, and the appearance of the edifice has since been grievously improved by Victorian restorers.

The Bull, a traditional coaching inn, is a half-timbered building of scarcely lesser antiquity than the church, the two institutions sustaining the village and guiding it through the centuries in harmony rather as Gog and Magog, perhaps, have done for the Lord Mayor of London.

I’ll come back to that – I don’t really see what the Mayor is doing in there, but sometimes that’s just how things pop out when you’re Nanowrimo bound.

Across the confusion of the snug, Lady Jane perceived a solid, foursquare young man with short blond hair, whose eyebrows had been elevated on the entrance of Lord Fidgett’s unruly offspring, and had not yet resumed their customary position.

“That must be Charlie Green,” she thought to herself, and took a moment to appraise his figure. He was well-built, in a way which bespoke hard work and his complexion was slightly weather-beaten. His expression was open and honest, courageous without being aggressive, and his relaxed posture suggested a quiet confidence. She decided to wait a moment and see how he comported himself in this contingency.

Rising easily to his feet, Charlie moved over to where Young Joe grovelled at the feet of his putative feudal lord.

“Get up, Joe,” said Charlie, “And you – that’s enough. I don’t give second warnings, alright?”

The surprised aristocrat sneered back at him.

“Alright then.” he said, and made as if to turn away. But soon as Charlie’s eyes turned to Young Joe, the Earl whipped round again and launched a fist at his temple.

With a loud slap, the fist was intercepted by the palm of a large, steady hand, which held it firmly for a moment.

“You’d better go.” said Charlie, shortly.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Alastair Fidgett, the eldest son of the late Earl.”

“I’m the bloody Earl of Wenham.” said that individual. His siblings and cronies gathered gradually behind him. “You need to be taught a lesson.” he added, and paused: but then suddenly, he turned on his heel and left, with the whole crew following meekly behind.

“You’re Charlie Green.” observed Lady Jane, holding out her hand. Charlie looked puzzled, and then shook her hand politely.

“How would you like to be my chauffeur?”

Alright, I know I said Charlie was her faithful chauffeur, and now she’s meeting him for the first time, but we can sort that out. Actually I prefer it this way. It’ll be quite useful, really, because she can explain things to Charlie, like her search for the Evil Man…

“You see, Charlie, it’s a personal interest of mine which I pursue in tandem with my journalistic career. I like to uncover what’s behind the whitewash on the sepulchre – that’s pretty much what journalists do, I suppose – but I’ve always wanted to meet a truly evil man, I’ve met many criminals, of course; but all of them were stupid, or weak, or confused rather than truly, deeply bad. A few of them weren’t really bad men in any way at all, just unlucky or misunderstood. I keep hoping, but I’m beginning to think I shall never really find my Evil Man. However, while we’re in this area, we may as well drop in on this painter chappie – Oliver Mordaunt, the Abstract Expressionist. He’s quite successful – you may have heard of him? His paintings have always seemed to me to speak of deep resentments, of grudges harboured and nurtured. He may not be the Evil Man, but he ought to be worth a cup of tea.”

I think it’s going rather well, and I’m going to bed.