Writers never die (1)

I was going to be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for a year.  It was a great honour. Over 25,000 aspiring writers applied for the post. That’s the creator of Sherlock Holmes, in my body, with plans, I was told, to write a new series of stories, especially for Benedict Cumberbatch.  

The theory that the souls of great writers really do never die had finally been proved, with the discovery of the missing souls of Dickens, Shakespeare, Austen, and many other of the great literary artists who were found floating through the ether of existence.

The transposition of Shakespeare’s soul into the body of a research scientist had led to the production of Shakespeare’s first play for 400 years: Queen Victoria Part 1, dealing with her youthful promotion to the throne. The play was a great success and was shortly followed by Queen Victoria Part II, dealing with the death of Prince Albert and the Queen’s period of mourning.  The final part (Part III if you really need it spelled out) told of an ageing monarch clinging to the throne, with a frustrated Prince waiting for the crown that he had expected twenty years previously.

Echoing the current tensions between Charles and Elizabeth the play was immediately acknowledged as one of the Bard’s greatest works and played no small part in the decision to pass the succession onto Harry, leaving Charles free to write angry, chaotic articles for the Telegraph until a seizure rendered him entirely useless.

Following the success of reviving Shakespeare, scientists and writers soon became obsessed with finding the souls of the rest of greats:   Austen, Dickens, Bronte, Elliot, Defoe, Sterne. It was said that having the soul of a great writer in your body left a trace of that writer’s talent behind when he (or she) moved on. 

Shakespeare was moved into a new body every year, but the researcher he inhabited for that first year went on to publish a best selling novel. As a result thousands of aspiring writers were queuing up to have a great writer enter their body. Special committees were quickly established to identify writers of suitable potential and promise to be trusted with the souls of the great.

It became customary for all aspiring writers on the first year of a masters programme in writing to let out their body to the soul of a classic author, to literally experience what it’s like to be a great writer.  Competition for the better writers thus became fierce, with over 100,000 applicants for the annual transfer of Shakespeare alone.

Less well-known names were eventually discovered in the ether. Who exactly was Bruce Hutchinson? Or Elsie Sugsby, or Piddy Piper? Nobody cared. The fact that their souls survived was evidence enough that they were great, however poorly their books may have sold. Thousands applied to be Piddy Piper and Elsie Sugsby.

I was offered the soul of a writer called Terrence Oblong, a recently deceased writer, unpublished, whose work, such as it could be found in vanity volumes and unedited websites, lacked any obvious merit. However, it was universally agreed that he must be great, if his soul had survived, and his work became an unexpected posthumous hit, and was widely taught in schools and universities.  What, the question was widely and genuinely asked, the fuck was Terrence Oblong trying to do? How, in any conceivable way, could his random output of samey, unoriginal fiction be considered great? 

I digress. Enough to say that I was so inflamed by being offered the soul of such an inferior writer that I made it my life’s goal to get the best. Forget the rest, I would have the soul of one of the true greats in my bones, or none at all.

Having read the Sherlock Holmes stories many times, and having a leaning towards crime fiction, I decided I would apply for Conan Doyle’s soul. The application process was arduous, like an X Factor for fiction writers, but I eventually got through to the final stage. I won with my essay ‘Conan Doyle and the fairies, which reflected on Conan Doyle’s once-mocked spiritualist beliefs and the fact that he had now been discovered to be one of the fairies himself.

Hurrah. I would become the writer of Sherlock Holmes. I would learn so much, observe the writing process first hand. This, I thought to myself, is the best thing that could ever happen to me.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.