The Dragon Roars

An earlier post on this blog explained how I get many writing ideas from my reading, and in this post I can provide proof-positive of that. Yesterday, I was stuck as to what I could write about, leaning toward a piece about bookstores but without sufficient material or motivation for it. Early this morning, I was still in the same frustrating holding pattern, so I gave up and decided to dip into my current reading, The Matter of Wales by the charming travel-writer Jan Morris. Within a few minutes, I came to a paragraph that inspired an entire new children's book miniseries as well as this article.

My proud "handle" on my personal Twitter account is The Real Welshman, which could be considered ironic since, technically, I'm no more than half Welsh. But, in another book, Jan Morris states that, no matter where you are from, you need only commit yourself to being Welsh and--boom--you are Cymry. Bearing already the advantage of real Welsh roots on my mother's side, I made that passionate commitment and swore personal fealty to the red dragon flag. Thereafter, the essence of Wales would forever be in my life and work.

I was already an adult when I learned the truth of my familial origins. As a kid, I thought I was Italian (I may still be, on my father's side), then I thought I was Irish because my mother had several times mentioned "Scotch-Irish" when referring to our roots. Even my beloved maternal grandfather had been confused about his genealogy, thinking that he came from German stock, though his last name, Morgan, should've given it away. In Welsh, Morgan means "born of the sea," and there are legends suggesting that my forebears actually did walk out of the water to claim the area of Wales that became Glamorgan (I've got an idea for a story that will incorporate that).

In fact, there was little time between getting used to saying "I'm Welsh" and visiting the ancestral land for the first time--actually, my only time, so far--at the close of 2002. No doubt I would've gotten a lot more out of the trip had I not been so annoyingly constipated the whole time, but I still enjoyed it, limited though its scope was. I witnessed first hand the stereotyped atmosphere of Wales: hilly and foggy with the pungent aroma of sheep dung. I rode through little towns of colorful dwellings that were so quiet you would've thought them deserted if not for the cars. I stopped into a quaint post office in a tiny convenience store and heard a wizened little rural woman speak to the clerk entirely in Welsh (only a quarter of the citizens can do that). I visited the seaside city of Swansea, where the drizzle was thick enough to make one think the ships might just drift on into town.

After that, I was hooked on being Welsh, and so I periodically return to my studies of that tiny country (I still call it a country though it's been part of Britain for many centuries). Those studies inspire new stories and, apparently, influence my thinking on existing ones. Lately, in fact, I've gotten so many ideas from my Welsh reading that I fear I might come to be seen as a Welsh writer. But, I guess there's nothing wrong with that.

For example, I have the vague concept for a detective story featuring Doctor John Watson on holiday in a Welsh mining town in the late 19th century (during the period Sherlock Holmes was thought deceased). There's the developing tale about a Welsh exorcist named Griffiths in the early 1800s (yes, I like period pieces; we've been over this). Also simmering right now is the aforementioned epic about the Morgans coming from the sea after millennia spent living happily in an Atlantis-like underwater kingdom.

And just today was born a new plot, when I happened upon a passage in Morris's book about the thirteen precious curiosities of Britain, which the legendary wizard Merlin hid away after King Arthur died. I was captured by the mention of the Chair (or Car) of Morgan Mwynfawr, and ideas immediately burst forth to quickly fill two pages in my little story notebook. Suddenly, I was off and running, plotting the multivolume saga of middle-schooler Sean Kent and his adventures in the magical automobile called Morgan's car. Once I was spent on initial material for that, I turned to writing this post, which is now about done. And it's not even 10 A.M.

The spirit of the red dragon got me to this point, I have no doubt.

#ideas #fiction #genealogy