Should I Write It???

A visitor to this blog has suggested that I write the missing Narnia story.

First I would have to get permission from the estate of C.S. Lewis. I have no idea what would be the chances of that. Supposing I got it, I’d have a tremendously hard act to follow. There would be plenty of Narnia fans who wouldn’t be pleased no matter what I did.

Obviously the story would have to be about redemption–Queen Susan’s, and ultimately our own. As you’ll see when you read The Fugitive Prince, I’m not afraid to write about redemption. It’s an overarching theme of the whole Bell Mountain series. But I am afraid of trying to imitate C.S. Lewis, so I would have to write a Narnia story in my own way, without trying to imitate one of the least imitable writers I have ever read.

It doesn’t seem to me that Susan committed any gaudy, eye-popping sins. She just sort of drifted away from Aslan–as so many of us, at one time or another in our lives, just drift away from Christ. You don’t have to commit any big sins to do that; a lot of little ones will do as well. Individually, they might not even look like sins. Is there really anything all that sinful about “nylons and lipstick and invitations”? It would be easier to write the story if Susan became an adulteress, a counterfeiter, or an atheist. But I don’t think Lewis would have been interested in anything that obvious. No–this would have to be a story about being delivered from bondage to a lot of sneaky little sins that imperceptibly add up to the great sin of forgetfulness. Come to think of it, that’s the same sin committed by Obann as a nation in the Bell Mountain stories.

Regardless of whether I decide to stick to my own matter of Obann, etc., and not take up this challenge, I still think someone ought to do it. But I’ll think about it until, as Sir Bors once said, “a better knight shall come along to do this battle.”