the rix mix

I've never seriously considered authoring a "grownup" novel. I'm not compelled to write a novel at all; compulsion is cause to write a wordy thing that by the odds won't get into print & by the odds will fail to attract any attention if it does. You can fill a library with last year's fiction remainders & never spend more than $3.98 on any one of them. I have carried around ideas for two short novels for a long time. One was originally inspired by a wonderful & wise book "The Crock of Gold" by Irishman James Stephens, which draws on the Celtic belief in other worlds & beings occupying the same approximate space but not quite the same dimensions as us, although doors between the worlds constantly open & close, & children think nothing of conversing with cows, & cows chat with the flies on their noses. I forget who gave me this book; I loaned it to someone who kept it but probably didn't read it. When you loan a book, chances are you'll never see it again.

For my novel I'd have created a Celtic-pagan supernatural scheme about a conflict that's been going on between good & bad clans since who knows when, bring it to contemporary America, where some families tried to forget about it & others passed on the knowledge & traditions. Two college students, descendents of good clans, put themselves in great danger when they set these ancient forces in motion by falling in love, because of their positions in their own families - she's an oldest sibling & he's a youngest. These matches used to be arranged. The young woman is wise to this history, the young man is completely unaware, then incredulous. She has to quickly convince him & teach him what he needs to know to protect himself.

The magical powers are limited, & like a new language are more difficult to learn when you're older. They involve some sixth sense & the creation of subtle illusion, such as the use of "blarney" - Irish sweet talk - as hypnotic sound, which is how she attracted him in the first place, in a casual conversation at a coffeehouse. With this magic you couldn't make things move or levitate but you could make people think they have, like rustling leaves in a tree on a breezeless day. It might have been a nice coming-of-age story for middle schoolers, centering on an adolescent romance between two college freshmen, but the Harry Potter books upped the level of action & detail far beyond what I had in mind. I imagined a kind of poetic magic that had to be applied in creative, timely & virtually invisible ways. That is, battles could happen in public places with no one but the participants aware of what was going on.

The "good" characters, who at first aren't sure who's trying to hurt them or even why, know they might be tricked into walking in front of moving bus - one's life becomes a series of accidents waiting to happen. In the end, all is settled but nothing fully won or lost. Balance is temporarily restored. The young lovers of course part. But there's an possibility for a sequel. I loosely outlined this novel in a steno notebook almost 20 years ago, realizing that my knowledge of Celtic culture, myth & language was inadequate for the task. Still is. I wouldn't be at all surprised if my novel already exists. Stories are like melodies.

Labels: about writing