I tried NaNoWriMo last November. I got to 15,000 words before abandoning it. Might as well share the first two paras!
A dirty white van screamed to a halt by the Canada Gate entrance to Green Park. Maybe the inquisitive, nine-year-old Prince Charles heard it from a room in Buckingham Palace and briefly abandoned his Meccano to look out of a window to the brightly lit street below. The back doors swung open and a package flung onto the pavement by unseen hands. The van sped off, the hands now visible and stretching to pull the back doors shut. A newspaper seller, scarf and fingerless gloves, came out from behind his stand and with practised hands broke the string to reveal the contents. The Saturday evening 'Football Classified' edition of the London Evening News. He carelessly put the newly delivered headline sheet behind the wires of his placard - 'Seasiders Sink Gunners'. The new editions thrown on top of the earlier, he resumed his position and demonstrated his unique talent for changing the five syllable street newspaper sellers' cry of 'Star, News and Standard' to 'Football Special' - without gaining a beat.
The above scene played out in front of a passing middle-aged man in a greatcoat carrying a rolled-up newspaper - perhaps a midday edition delivered earlier by the same white van and the same pair of disembodied hands. But this man was no part of an audience to any proceedings. An astute observer might have detected something a little too premeditated in his seeming indifference to his situation. John MacInnes was the epitome of carefree as he entered Green Park. He looked everywhere and nowhere. He studied his feet to avoid any early-evening ice; he studied the stars; he studied his surroundings. But all with a facility that strongly suggested a lack of any real purpose to an early-evening stroll. He took the path through the park that led from Buckingham Palace to Piccadilly. When he saw the steam pouring from the kitchens of The Ritz, he abruptly stopped and, without looking around, sat himself down on a nearby bench.
