They didn’t take me seriously. I pressed the subject, I wrote papers, I wrote letters, I made websites, I withdrew from my family, my job, my life, and I desperately tried to put the message out. Eventually, I was arrested for attacking a member of parliament, and causing serious bodily harm. I was deemed to have a lack of control over my own actions, and I was placed in an institution. They say I don’t know what I am doing, or why I do things.
But I do know one thing.
I know that on the 17th of August in this year, at twenty-eight minutes past six in the evening, the President of The United States of America will push the Nuclear Button. Fourteen million people will be killed.
The Happy Pills
I bought my first packet of the Happy Pills two days after they became legal. I’d have bought them on the day, but they’d sold out everywhere. And walking down the street, you couldn’t really tell. People were still working, were still rushing, but there was a slight change. Barely noticeable at first, but the closer you looked … the more you noticed that there was a bounce in more people’s steps. There were slightly more smiles on faces, the conversations were slightly more animated. The mood was almost infectious.
The Happy Pills fired synapses in your brain that normally needed stimuli in order to push your mood. The kind of stimuli that would be caused by those few hours spent in the park, basking in the good weather with no pressures at all. The kind of stimuli that would be caused by totally unexpected, really good sex. No, you didn’t feel like you’d been doing those things – but you got the same kind of good mood that I can only describe by relating it to euphoria.
It wasn’t euphoria though. Euphoria tends to lead to you losing some element of control. The Happy Pills didn’t. They had absolutely no negative side-effects whatsoever. They just put you in as good a mood as you could possibly be in. That was it.
At the time, Karen and I were having problems. We’d been married for eight years and it’s fair to say that the passion had long, long since died. Sex had been non-existent for three years prior and it hadn’t been present much after we became parents anyway. And while Karen and I were best friends as well as lovers, eight years of cabin fever were beginning to take their toll. There was still love in our marriage but it had been a long time since we were in love. We’d tried things to get the romance back into our lives but it just wasn’t happening.
And then the Happy Pills came out. We talked about it, about trying them. We thought they might help. And so, two days after the pills came out, we tried them. Both of us. And then we waited.
It wasn’t something that happened immediately. It was subtle. We were sat talking and after a few hours, we realised we were laughing more than we had done in a long time. It didn’t seem artificial either. It was just like we’d remembered things that we liked about each other. It didn’t sort everything, not immediately, but it was fun.
We took the pills daily. That weekend, we went out and just walked around Hyde Park for a few hours. It was the site of one of our first dates, and we hadn’t done something like that for a long time. Just enjoyed each other’s company for the first time in years. The park was packed but there was no hassle. Everyone was in a good mood.
The longer you took the pills, the more you noticed the change, and – conversely – the less it mattered. The pills had a way of just clarifying everything. It was like realising that, for the last however many years of your life, you’d been suffering from a constant migraine that had finally lifted.
Within two years of the pill being launched in public, they were selling in similar quantities as bread. Everybody bought them. And there were new kids turning eighteen every day, so it was an evergreen product, too.
It wasn’t just Britain either. The Happy Pills were worldwide. And it was making a difference. It took a while for the wars to finish but they did. Suddenly, religious and cultural differences stopped mattering. It was difficult to find the emotion necessary to kill someone when everyone was in a good mood.
Crime was down too. Not actually zero, but certainly at the lowest it had ever been. Perhaps it was because poverty wasn’t such an issue. People were happy and didn’t feel quite as much of a need to prove themselves through money any longer. As a result, there were record sums being given to charity. Although the pills made you happy, the happiness meant that people were more productive. People either found the joy that made them want the jobs they were in already, or they felt more confident about themselves, and went after the jobs they actually wanted. And rejections were a lot easier to deal with when you felt good.
And the sex. Oh God, the sex. It was amazing. And every time was good. Karen and I were back like we’d been in our first year of dating, rediscovering everything about each other. It was fun, it was happy.
Last year my mother died. She was in her late sixties and she had died in surgery, in an attempt to remove a benign tumour. An infection led to her contracting an illness and the illness killed her. The funeral was a beautiful affair, full of joy and love, as we all remembered everything that had been good about her as a person, and how much she enriched our lives. The only tears that day were tears of laughter. She would have loved it. We grieved. Of course we grieved, but it wasn’t as important as remembering how wonderful her life had been.
The world had become a wonderful place. And not artificially either – the mood may have been caused by the pills, and maintained by them, but it wasn’t just them. Once you were up and running, the pills just helped you keep to a certain level. The real highs were natural, and the real lows just didn’t happen any more.
It was a utopia. A real utopia, right here on earth.
And then it ended.
We didn’t realise that the synapses in the brain would wear out. We didn’t realise that, one day, they would just stop working. It wasn’t one day – all over the world or anything like that, but rather it happened a little over six years after you started taking them.
Nobody realised for a while. The suicides of the original scientists, and the chairman of Abblexcon were puzzling, but nobody understood. They didn’t tell us.
It took time for it to spread and for people to realise what was happening. But all of a sudden, there were two classes in the world. There were those that were happy, and those that weren’t. Those who had been poor in the past were still happy, since they were generally the last to start taking the pills. Those that were the first – those internet buyers – were the first large group to be affected.
There were murders. Lots of murders. There’s nothing worse than watching other people being constantly happy when you’re not. And there were a lot of suicides. The death toll, as it stands now, is in the millions.
There are riots on the streets. Unhappiness and depression and anger towards those that are still happy. Watching it happen is horrible, and we empathised but we didn’t understand what it felt like any more.
Until it happened to us. You remember how I told you that it felt like a migraine had suddenly been lifted? Imagine getting the migraine back, and realising that it was never, ever going to stop again.
Imagine spending the best six years of your life, and then realising that the rest of your life is going to be spent living with the memory of all the good feelings, all the happiness, knowing that it’s denied to you for ever. Because you used a pill to burn out the part of your brain that makes you happy.
You can’t understand, David. I don’t expect you to understand and I hope to God that you never understand. I need you to keep the next sentence in mind for the rest of your life. Never take them, no matter how good you’re told they are. Because I love you, son, and I never want you to feel like I feel right now.
Your mother killed herself two hours ago. We had an argument and we fought. It’s all my fault, and I love her and I miss her, and I miss feeling like we used to feel, and I miss being who I was when I was with her, and I miss how much I loved her, and I miss how much she loved me. I miss my mother. I miss my
wife. I will miss you so much.
My body will be upstairs, David. Don’t look. Call the authorities; they have enough practice in dealing with it. Just know that it didn’t hurt. And it’s the only thing that can stop me feeling like this. From knowing how much I’ve lost.
You will never fully know how much I love you.
Your father.
The Knight in the Library
The forgotten characters sit quietly in the library. They look at each other occasionally with sad and sometimes hopeful smiles.
They are afforded privileges based on age and popularity. After all, an older, popular character has lost more than a minor character in a recent novel.
Once, some of them were loved. Once, some of them inspired people. Now, they sit there, gathering dust.
He is one of the oldest. A Knight, one of the group that inspired the Knights of Camelot. One of the group who had fought alongside King Arthur, but had failed to be re-written the second time around, and who had just become more forgotten.
Every day, he comes in and sits patiently, hoping to be remembered. He does not complain. He does not feel sad. He is a Knight and Knights have dignity.
Also, every day, he gets to see her. The ancient African princess. She is beautiful, wise and kind. She makes every one of his days better and the endless purgatory worthwhile. They don‘t talk much. Nobody talks much after so long. But they always find something new to say each day, and they always make eye contact and he can always make her smile.
She likes to see him. Some days, that’s all that matters.
Today, he waits, and she does not come.
He looks around the library, but she is nowhere. He talks to the world’s first detective (a fat Chinese man who laughs a lot) and he talks to the golden calf (which spoke to Eve in the garden and became so popular that God himself got annoyed), but neither of them know why. But neither of them cares as much as he does.
The Knight has only rarely spoken to the Librarian. There has never been any need. But today, he clears his throat and enquires after the princess.
‘Oh, her? Got rediscovered’, the Librarian says. ‘Some fantasy writer sort of updated her, and the book came out this week. Very good reviews. There may even be a movie. You won’t see her back here again.’
The Knight thanks the Librarian and makes his way back to his normal chair where he sits and waits.
He looks at her chair, but it is empty.
He waits.
And waits.
Waits.
And waits.
Patiently.
How to Write a Novel in 30 Hours (and What I Learnt)
I first found out about the National Novel Writing Weekend challenge on Twitter. HarperCollins announced they would publish the winner of the competition run by The Kernel magazine. So, the first tip is probably to get on Twitter. There’s so much information on there, as long as you can separate the signal from the noise.
The challenge was to write a complete work of fiction within 30 hours. I’ve generally felt like a slow writer, so it appealed on a personal level. The first time I tried to write a novel it took me four years. The second took me two years. It’s not just that I’m a procrastinator, I also found myself frozen when it came to writing important scenes.
As a result, writing something substantial in 30 hours felt like an extreme sport. Writing without any kind of helmet or safety net. No time to second guess myself or overthink.
Two days before the competition, I came up with a rough idea for a plot. All I had were two story points (I tend to think of the major events taking place in a novel as beats in a piece of music) – the idea of the technology injected into the eyes, and the revelation that the narrator is a clone. I let the ideas bounce around a little bit, but nothing more than that.
The Kernel offered the opportunity to go to their offices and write there, with the further offer of food and coffee. I wanted to do that as I doubted my ability to avoid distraction at home. The plan was to write in two 15- hour stretches over the weekend. The exam-like conditions of writing in their offices with a bunch of other writers helped immensely.
When I sat down to start, the first thing I did was plan. The only way I was going to be able to complete this challenge was to have a rough structure in place. If I developed eight story beats, with the revelation of the clone existing as the halfway point, that meant that I knew what I was aiming for during each section of writing. It also meant I was less likely to get ahead of myself.
I also decided to get my problem with names out of the way fast. In the past, I’ve been horrendous with names. I’ve hesitated and procrastinated over characters in the belief that they couldn’t live and breathe unless they had the absolutely perfect name. There was no time for that! So what I did was to write down a list of names. First and last. I actually wrote down a number of comic book creators, and then mixed and matched the names to give me a nice, handy list of character names. The main thing this meant was that I didn’t have to worry about it.
I tend to listen to music while I write and this was no exception. A large amount of the music on my MP3 player is comprised of soundtracks and film scores. I find anything with lyrics too distracting, and scores are designed for specific moods. POV was mainly written to a background of The Killing, The Dark Knight, The Artist, Doctor Who and lots of John Carpenter.
Using breaks as a reward is quite a good way to incentivise quick writing. If you know you have a rough word count to hit per hour and you know the plot point you’re aiming at within that time, it hopefully keeps you interested throughout. A coffee and a chat with those around you or even a breath of fresh air being just half an hour away if you can just nail this one scene can be some decent motivation.
For me, the hardest point was around halfway through. That plot point involving the revelation of a clone. I got to it, and I started writing it and … I lost all confidence in it. As a start to the second day, it wasn’t wonderful.
Normally, that’s the point where I’d take a break. Where I’d save the document and not open it again until I’d worked out something better – and that might never happen.
Here, though, I didn’t have that luxury. I either wasted time coming up with a completely new second half, or I got over my doubts and forced myself to make it work. No looking back until I finished it. And I didn’t have time for the first option, so I had to make it work.
If I’d listened to that nagging voice in the back of my head that told me that it wouldn’t work, that it was too much of a narrative jump, I wouldn’t have finished it. Not within 30 hours and possibly not ever. Forcing myself to get it down on the page and make it work was the last thing I wanted to do, because I was scared it wouldn’t work.
That’s the biggest thing I learnt. That fear and doubt can sometimes be a by-product of having too much time and that if you force yourself to do it, you can make something work. If it was a good enough idea to get you interested in writing it in the first place, then you’ll be able to work out a way to fix it.
Would I do it again? After all, 30 hours was a long time to write and it flared up the arthritis in my right hand for over a week afterwards. And it was exhausting – even with a full night’s sleep in-between sessions, I was still utterly knackered the day after it was finished. And I dread to think what the amount of caffeine I ingested has done to my body.
Yes. Absolutely. Writing that fast, and losing the opportunity to look back is freeing and exciting. I didn’t know if I’d be able to do it, and it was exhilarating to do. If the competition runs again next year, I’d recommend it to any writers.
About the Author
Chris Brosnahan is the winner of the The Kernel’s 2012 30 Hour Novel Competition, judged by HarperCollins.
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