Today’s post is one of the few examples of a page one rewrite not working at all. The story outline I mentioned yesterday was re-visited a few times, and I got as far as writing a couple of pages. Then trashed them, and repeat ad infinitum.

Once the out-there mystical storyline went off the rails (and into the rubbish bin), I thought about more of a real world threat. Again, our Nega Stu ends up on an island. It’s Ireland for real now, and the reason is still the same: his “friend” stole the hard drive with all his writing and supposedly, the hard drive is in this village in Ireland.

Nega Stu befriends a local priest, who is part of a larger plot which is political in nature. A large part of the village’s population has been radicalized by a few idealists and the main conflict resided there. I reached a point where the radicalized people felt like straw men arguments and I just couldn’t see the point of continuing the story. The final act consisted on a large chase/fight scene on an off-shore oil rig. The radicals want to destroy it, Nega Stu was hurt on an earlier fracas and his “friend” redeems himself by stopping the radicals. The ending was ambiguous for both, as they each take boats to different islands during a larger storm.

I felt Theme from Harry’s Game fitted that story both for the setting and the lyrical content of the song. I think some of my ideas in the story fell into the usual depiction of The Troubles. And that made me uncomfortable. I felt out of place writing about that particular conflict. I felt I was exploiting the suffering of people for a story that had no relevance to their pain. Again, straw men arguments don’t make for compelling storylines. And if they do, I wouldn’t feel comfortable at all finishing a novel.

So, several page one re-writes and that novel/novella (depending on my mood) was best left as an idea. I ended up taking the setting as a “limbo” for a character in another book. That book I’m still working on, and that “limbo” situation doesn’t come out of nowhere, helping me bridge two different storylines together.

I first heard Theme from Harry’s game at the cinema when Patriot Games came out in 1992. We had a THX cinema near my house, and it was “permanencia voluntaria”, that means, you paid for one ticket and you could stay for as many shows as you wanted (or decided to endure). Went with my mother and we decided to watch the film twice in a row, we felt it was that good. And the next day, we brought my dad, since he was a massive fan of Tom Clancy, but wasn’t keen on Harrison Ford replacing Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan. He changed his mind after the tense opening action scene.

Both my mom and I thought it as Enya, as it sounded “Enya-ish”. The name Clannad rang a bell, and checking my brother’s music collection, lo and behold, there it was, Magical Ring from Clannad. Magical Ring is a marvellous album, and it was the moment Clannad switched from folk into ethereal folk, deftly adapting synths into their already otherworldly sound. I loved the Robin of Sherwood music growing up, so finding them again through Patriot Games was a welcome surprise.

I still think about this novel I abandoned and wonder if I should try one more time, now with a few decades under the bag (and knees, and eyebags). Perhaps I’m more cynical about things, but I still enjoy writing from a fresh perspective. World weariness can take a lot from you, but you need to learn from it too.

-Sam J. Valdés López