You’re a writer – you know how it goes. You want to do your research accurately, right? So you spend a week in the Taiga, freezing your keester off. Or maybe it’s a story that takes place in the NYC subway tunnels, so you, like, hide out down there for a week with the mole people.
Me? I am not that researcher. I know I should be, but I just can’t quite muster up that devil-may-care-I-can-do-it spirit. Not sure if I actually have one of those.
My wife? She’ll do it in a minute. Zip to the Taiga and be back on Monday to tell you all about it. Mole people? She’ll make ‘em besties within an hour and have to be reminded to go home. It’s just the way she’s wired.
I have no such circuitry in my system. Let me look at the pictures. Let me dream about it. Let me read up on it until I can taste it. Only then can I put a character there. And even then I’ll have to fill in the gaps.
But, even if I’d been there, I’d still have to fill in gaps, right? I mean, trying to thread a needle with frozen fingers – you and I can describe it without actually having done it, right?
This is dumb, but I’ve been thinking about making a model of Columbus’ Santa Maria as a piece of yard art. Beyond my daughter the archeologist killing me, the idea doesn’t have a lot going for it.
Wait, wait, don’t walk away. See, there are some upsides. Over at my sister site, Skippity Whistles, I’ve started zeroing in on specific tools. What better way to demo those tools than on yard art for all the neighbors to appreciate?
Nah. Doesn’t work for me, either.
In doing the research, however, I stumbled across this picture:
Now, you may not be a sailor – lord knows I am not one – but you have to admit, that is one romantic image.
She surges along, all five sails drawing, heading off on the adventure of a lifetime.
Oh, to be aboard that magical ship!
Except she’s rollng over the waves – you can see how far she’s leaned over to starboard by the water mark up her side.
Except she’s cold and damp inside, and smells like the garbage-strewn, urine-laced water that’s in her bilges and the stench of unwashed men.
And those clouds ahead can only mean one thing, and that won’t be pleasant.
Rough seas pounding over the bows, sluicing down the decks and finding every open seam to rain icy seawater onto the poor sailormen huddled below.
Howling wind shrieking through the rigging and trying to pull that poor fellow at the tiller over the side. The wind is so cold and the water so pervasive he thinks that might not be such a bad idea.
She rides the waves like a cork – the man at the tiller knows to keep her stern into the wind or she’ll roll like a bottle. But that means her bows rise far up the back of the waves and then dive deep into the troughs and you wonder to yourself if that green water coming over the foc’sl is gonna do for you this time.
And it’s dark – not a light in that black sky to give a glimmer of hope that you’ll see the sun come up. Oh, there’s a candle lantern below deck, but the feeble light only shows the faces of your shipmates – some frightened, some hiding it.
The only light on deck is the little candle in the binnacle, illuminating the compass rose. By that steers the tiller man, west always, and by that lies your hope of surviving this storm.
And maybe you’re the captain, taking your place next to the tiller man.
Shaking your head like a dog to dash the sea water from your eyes, you strain your eyes into the inky night to see the next wave, maybe calling to the tiller man to steer port a touch. But you must bellow over the wind’s howl.
And you are tired – so, so tired of the wind and the water and the constant motion and the responsibility for all these lives.
And still she thunders on, surging up this hill, plugging down that one.
Well, gee, mister. When you put it like that, maybe a fella might do better to sit at home and just write a book about it!
John D Reinhart 