Chapter Text
Clara Oswald stared at the blank Word document in front of her, trying to determine which emotion it most instilled in her. Anger? Self-loathing? Anxiety? Guilt? The flashing cursor certainly made her feel as though she were being taunted by some kind of virtual entity, and as she hovered her fingers over the keyboard, she offered a silent prayer to some kind of higher being that inspiration would strike her and today would be the day that her manuscript would go from entirely blank to containing… well, anything.
But instead…
Nothing.
Nothing came, and she sighed, resisting the urge to slam her MacBook shut and groan aloud. The words and ideas simply would not come, and so she scowled fixedly at the blue bar at the top of the screen, which bore the hopeful name of ‘Doctor Who, Book 4’. A title would come later; they usually came to her midway through the creative process, as she took her fictional detective on his adventures with a sense of self-assuredness that she was now entirely lacking. She could see Doctor Marcus Pond, her protagonist, in both a literal and metaphorical sense as she sat at her laptop; he was striding about in her mind’s eye, doing the most generic of things and refusing to conform to or suggest any kind of new plot, and an enlarged print of him was framed on the wall of her lounge, gifted to her at a book signing by a fan.
Clara sighed again. Her fans would be disappointed in her, she knew. It was still strange to even have fans; she had never set out to be a novelist. Fiction writing had been an idle pastime that she’d taken up in her teens, inspired by the novels and poems that she’d been reading in English Literature lessons, and her earliest attempts had been shudder-inducingly awful, a series of lamentably derivative works that had riffed on the style of whichever author she’d been studying at the time. Her school had tried to discourage her from her endeavours, convinced they would mar her academic achievements or waste time that might otherwise be spent on schoolwork or engaging in ‘acceptable’ hobbies like joining the netball team, but Clara had dug her heels in and stuck to her guns, all the more determined for their attempts at dissuading her.
There had been a degree in English Literature, an online course in creative writing, and then – panicking about her job prospects, as so many of her peers had been – there had been teacher training, and a job at Coal Hill Academy in Shoreditch. Finding her free time dramatically reduced, Clara had forsaken the majority of her other interests, socialised with her colleagues only where absolutely necessary, and set about refining her style, getting the odd piece published in magazines or online in between marking essays about Shakespeare and poetry. Seeing her name in print was ego-boosting, certainly, and whilst part of her would deny that she wrote for fame, another part of her had hungered for that big break; the moment that she would write something so earth-shatteringly excellent that a publisher would snap it up at once.
That had taken five years. Five years until she’d circled back to an idea about a hyperactive, loose-limbed young detective she’d dreamt up at university and never taken anywhere; five years until she’d reworked that first short story until it grew longer, and longer still, and she’d plugged the gaps and added characters and created a past for him and the text had become, without really trying, Doctor Who and the Eleventh Hour. It had been snapped up by Temple & Noble Publishing, and overnight Clara had become a minor celebrity within the literary world, renowned for her – as the Guardian put it, to her considerable pride – ‘glittering debut novel.’ Not that any of her students or colleagues really cared; if anything, the teenagers she tried to teach about Jane Austen thought that her success only made her deeply lame, and she wasn’t entirely convinced that a single one of them had even read the book.
There had been a sequel, written far more easily than the first, and this one was met with dedicated, passionate fans who came to the handful of book signings that had been arranged for her; people who had queued for hours to tell her how much they had enjoyed the first instalment, and enthuse with her about the most minor of details, the most trivial of plot points. People who were genuinely happy to meet her, and share in the world and characters that she’d created; people who loved and adored Doctor Pond and his affable, clumsy nature and sharp mind.
The third book had been received with even more enthusiasm. There had been more book signings, in bigger bookshops; her school had sniffily agreed to the time off, mollified only by the fact that they could brag that one of their employees was a successful author. Some of her colleagues had read the books now, and while some of them had been complimentary, she could still recall the excruciating agony of being told that the entire concept was terrible by one of the Physics teachers, which she’d tried to reason away with the justification that scientifically minded people were not perhaps likely to be the largest fan of fiction books in general, and especially not detective novels. There had been interviews too – with the Guardian, with BBC Breakfast, with Lorraine Kelly, and those had been excruciating enough to participate in, let alone to watch or read back, or have quoted at her by fans or students, some of whom had tuned in just to be able to mock her for the way she’d sat or spoken or shown her passion for her work over the following weeks.
But now… now fans were waiting for the fourth book, and had been for two years. They had spent two years online, in forums and on social media, analysing Clara’s every tweet or post, combing through the previous books for any hint of what the fourth might be about, and writing their own – sometimes extremely graphic – fanfiction, which Clara snooped through occasionally, more out of curiosity than any desire to plagiarise ideas. Some of it was excellent, some of it was filthy, and some of it… well, there were some works that she tried to block out of her mind, involving very niche pairings and things that she wasn’t entirely sure were physically possible. She certainly had no intention of finding out.
And yet despite her forays into the world of fanfiction, despite the hundreds of tweets she received weekly asking about the next book, and despite the fact that Marcus Pond was fully-formed in Clara’s mind and ready for his next adventure – indeed, he had recently started appearing in her dreams with a decidedly judgemental expression, as though asking why he was being left to rot away with boredom – the words would not come. The plot would not emerge. There was nothing there beyond Marcus himself, dapper in his fitted tweed jacket and braces, metaphorically tapping his foot and looking at his watch as though encouraging her to get a move on and give him something to do.
Clara had insisted on returning to her day job, even after the third book and its swathe of positive reviews and the small but well-received media tour. She’d dropped down to part-time hours, but she’d wanted to keep teaching for all the clichéd reasons – she’d wanted to keep making a difference and inspiring teenagers to love literature, although the longer she spent at Coal Hill, the more she started to question whether she was even doing that. She had been beginning to wonder whether she’d made a mistake by not giving up teaching entirely, and then everything had changed, and she’d found herself quite literally lost for words, and so now she was grateful to at least have something to keep her busy, and to supplement her income.
And now, the more time that passed, the more Clara could feel her anxiety growing. She knew she had a duty not only to her fans, but to her agent and her publisher; she had been paid an advance in exchange for a book that had not yet materialised, and Clara knew that she only had a finite amount of time left before the tide would begin to turn, and she would find people’s interest and enthusiasm in her would wane, or turn to anger. She was already seeing some of the fans’ frustration online, in tweets and in blog posts, as people wondered what exactly was taking her so long and speculated on her personal life, some of which they had managed to piece together from newspaper articles and the school’s website. That felt invasive and borderline creepy; the last thing she needed was admirers turning up at the school gate. She could only imagine what her colleagues and the headteacher would think of that, and she cringed at the thought.
Clara knew she needed to start work, and soon, but she found herself utterly unable to think of… well, anything. She didn’t want to hash out any old bilge and let down her fans, and yet she knew her continued silence was equally disappointing for them; anxiety had begun to creep into her psyche as she stared at the blank Word document day in, day out, and she found herself panicking as she lay in bed at night, afraid of being labelled a failure. She’d worked hard for this; she’d financially struggled at the cost of honing her craft, she’d argued with the head about being able to disclose in her author’s biography that she was a teacher, she’d fought with her dad about elements of the books that he’d considered ‘too close to home.’ He might have been right, but she wasn’t about to admit that, and so now they hadn’t spoken for longer than she’d care to admit, and every part of that still stung.
Clara scowled at the blank document, then closed it and shut her MacBook, turning her attention instead to the pile of marking that was sat beside her now-empty coffee cup on her desk. The mug bore the words go away, I’m writing, and it felt like a jab, so she got up and took it into the kitchen, dumping it in the sink and contemplating whether it was too early for a glass of wine. She supposed she shouldn’t drink while marking – there had been a near-miss once with a Rioja and a student’s mock exam – and she cast a longing glance at the fridge before padding back into the lounge, sitting back down and uncapping her green pen.
Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Perhaps not the most suitable novel for fourteen year olds, but the only options given by the exam syllabus were either meticulously dull, relentlessly modern, or decidedly grim, and so she’d decided to go with the grim option in the hope that perhaps at least a handful of students would be captivated by the tale of Tess, whose difficult life was far from relatable and yet evoked a sense of empathy in Clara each time she reread the book. Pulling the top essay towards herself, she began to read, and made it halfway down the page before suppressing a groan and starting to scribble in the margins.
Clara managed five students’ work before she felt a sustained sense of despair at the world, and she got up, heading into the kitchen and pouring herself a glass of white wine as she wondered how teenagers could so fundamentally misunderstand the point of a text. She’d once enjoyed teaching, including the way in which her students could open her eyes to different viewpoints or interpretations, and yet this year’s GCSE cohort was… well, it was challenging her. Clara wasn’t sure what the words ‘Tess was annoying as hell’ would score them in an actual exam, but she suspected it would not work out in their favour, and she couldn’t help but wonder if the other teachers were having a similar problem with the Year 10s. Perhaps it was for the best that she didn’t have the option of making them study her own books; she shuddered at the thought of what they might make of hapless Marcus, and the thought of them unpicking her prose was horrifying. Teenagers: far more savage than even The Times’ literary critic, and far more direct. At least Melissa Saxon had been scathing from afar.
Padding back into the lounge with her wine, Clara stopped in front of the print of Marcus; in it, he was laughing, one hand holding the bright red fez he’d picked up in the first book, and the other doing a thumbs up. It was an excellent illustration, capturing the very essence of the detective that she’d created: fun-loving, hyperactive, and yet ferociously intelligent, with a breadth and depth of knowledge that had undoubtedly contributed to the ease with which he’d obtained his doctorate, the subject of which remained vague.
“Help me out,” Clara implored him, as though his illustrated face might move, and he might speak into existence the plot that she had been desperately seeking for two years. “Please.”
But he remained stubbornly, predictably still and silent, and Clara sighed, sitting back down and pulling another essay towards herself.