Nobby Norbertson had always known that he would one day
be a writer. He had been writing since the age of fifteen.
By twenty-one he could do joined-up writing. He once thought
of a beautiful poem, but he had no paper available so he
wrote it on his left hand – no small feat, considering
the fact that he wrote with his left hand. The inspiration
continued on and on, all the way up his arm and down his
stomach. He only ended the epic poem when he reached his
toes and ran out of body-space. Then he went home and, forgetting
momentarily about his masterpiece, had a shower. C'est la
vie.
Nobby's first novel was rejected by four publishers who
claimed that the story was just a little too depressing.
So he scrapped his autobiography and instead wrote a novel
about the Spanish Inquisition, with instant success. Unfortunately,
while carrying his tome to the printer's with a note from
the publishing company requesting delivery of an initial
ten thousand copies of the book, Nobby was struck with a
fit of inspiration. He sat under a bridge and spent a full
hour writing a children's version of Lady Chatterley's lover
on the back of his novel's pages. When it was finished he
decided that he didn't like the new work and – forgetting
all about the masterpiece on the other side – chewed
it up into little wet paper balls and threw them at people
crossing the bridge above his head. It was only when he
reached the words 'The End' on the other side that he realised
what he had done. He gathered all the paper balls together
and tried to reconstruct them, but he realised that he had
put them together in the wrong order when it turned out
like some horrifying sort of Jeffrey Archer novel, which
he swiftly burned.
Nobby returned to his first love, poetry. He came up with
a lovely poem on a bus, and began writing it down on the
back of his hand. It was only when he reached the thirty-second
verse on his buttocks that his fellow passengers began to
scream, so he quickly scribbled it out to conceal the evidence.
Nobby could only write when he was depressed. But he was
only depressed when he couldn't write, so he wrote more
when he couldn't write than he did when he could. Paradoxically,
his writing was more cheerful when he was of a depressed
disposition; when he was happy he tended to churn out totally
morose work which depressed even him when he read it, and
his melancholia resulted in him writing much more cheerfully.
Nobby was at his lowest ebb, when he came to a stark realisation:
to be a successful writer, you have to write about what
you know. Dick Francis wrote about jockeys, Shakespeare
wrote about men in tights, so Nobby would write about what
he knew, and knew well. His first book was published within
the month, and it sold ten million copies worldwide. It
was acclaimed as the most relaxing book ever written. People
who couldn't sleep, or simply wanted to relax, went out
and purchased his book 'Silence'. It was a real breakthrough
in the world of literature. Two hundred pages of sheer blankness,
which the buying public could read over and over again and
find something different every time. Seven more books filled
with empty pages followed in rapid succession, making Nobby
a millionaire eighty times over. He knew nothing, so he
wrote nothing.
Nobby became such a prolific author that he scrapped his
typewriter and threw away all his pens, and began to send
two hundred blank A4 sheets to Readett and Scrappett every
month. There was even a blank audiocassette version of his
first novel on the shelves of all good record shops. Nobby
won the Booker prize for literature for his fourth novel,
'Nothing', which was later made into a blockbuster movie
(with a ninety-two million pound budget), featuring not
only NONE of Hollywood's top stars, but a magnificently
relaxing empty screen as well.
Nobby wrote countless blank columns in the 'Times', and
the world's first totally minimalist newspaper, the ' Ìý
Ìý Ìý Ìý' (which came out in thirty-two
blank pages daily, with a completely empty magazine on Sundays)
was – needless to say – the brainchild of the
great non-wordsmith himself. Nobby appeared on numerous
TV chat-shows around the world and never said a word. The
very fact that he never opened his mouth and put his foot
in it made him an extremely popular choice as a future Prime
Minister, President or Ayatollah in any country of his choice.
As he became revered around the world as 'The greatest
author never to put pen to paper', Nobby rewrote his previously
unpublished autobiography in a more popular modern style,
by simply removing all the words with a few bottles of Tippex.
He then rewrote the complete works of Shakespeare (the world's
greatest writer before the extraordinary advent of Nobby
Norbertson) with the aid of an eraser and a pair of scissors.
He became so popular that nobody ever mentioned his name
(which was precisely the way he wanted it). However, since
his readers had to invent their own story in their heads
while enjoying a Nobby Norbertson novel, some people deciphered
some insulting remarks about themselves hidden between the
non-existent lines. A number of lawsuits were taken out
by disgruntled readers who believed that Nobby had libelled
them on the blank pages of his novels. Nobby threatened
to sue any publisher who issued blank books in breach of
his copyright. He even threatened to destroy the careers
of fellow authors in whose books he found the odd blank
page (and in one case, the empty space between two paragraphs),
for copying from his work. Yes indeed, Nobby Norbertson
certainly had a lot of things happening in his once desolate
life…a great deal of experiences for the author supreme
to write about (or not, as the case may be).
