The Glastonbury Tales

Like, I suspect, many writers, I have many more ideas for novels, short stories and poems than I actually have time to write. It can be a huge frustration, of course, but I suppose it's better than the other way round. I sometimes think someone should create a web site where writers can post their spare story ideas for others to pick up if they need the inspiration : plotswap.com, let's say, or sparestoryideas.org. At least the ideas wouldn't go to waste then. If I had the time I could do it myself. Except, of course, I'm too busy writing ...

I mention all this because of a particular idea I had over the last weekend, an idea that I won't get round to realising in the foreseeable future. Perhaps someone else will. I spent the weekend at a festival - The Green Man as it happens - and I got to thinking that the three or four days of an event like this would provide a great structure around which to weave a novel. All of human life is there. People fall in love. They argue. They get lost. They get muddy. They have wonderful or terrible experiences. They overindulge. They remember the simple pleasures in life. There is the constant threat of the elements. People are born and, sometimes, people die.

I have in mind three or four strands to the novel, each following a different lead character, each thread interwoven. There are so many possibilities : a youth alone at his or her first festival, overwhelmed by the whole experience. A fading rock-star playing to a dwindling audience. A middle-aged, respectable, straight character who is suddenly reminded of his or her youthful rebellion and unfulfilled dreams. A cynical paramedic, rescuing an endless stream of people from the same self-inflicted problems. The possibilities are endless. And at the end of the weekend, some or all of them go back to their respective real-lives, perhaps changed for good, perhaps not.

I've even thought up the name : The Glastonbury Tales. Now it just needs someone to write it ...