Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 37

It’s…a SEA MONSTER!!!

C.E. Grundler

Okay, so I know, it doesn’t exactly look all that monstrous. It’s a somewhat modified version of a Sailor Jerry tattoo design. For those of you not familiar with Sailor Jerry, he was a renown tattoo artist, and his artwork adorned the arms of many a WWII sailor. Classic hearts and anchors, soaring swallows, hula girls and curvaceous, scantily clad young women, all done in a distinctive style that has become iconic. I’d always admired his work, and I’ve been joking around about getting a tattoo for years. And if I was going to get a tattoo, what could be better than… a SEAMONSTER!

Why a sea monster?  For anyone who read Last Exit In New Jersey, there’s one moment, a critical moment, when one character could change the entire course of events, if only he could explain a crucial detail of something he’d witnessed. There is someone he is trying to describe, and the one detail he recalls is a distinctive tattoo. Yet his communication skills are abysmal, and the most he can relay, completely out of context, is: “He had a Sea Monster!”  It’s always been one of my favorite lines in the book, and for me, the ideal tattoo.

So I can already anticipate my phone ringing as this post goes live. (I would have posted earlier but it seems the interwebs were not online at home.) I can hear it now. “You’re getting a tattoo???”  I know a few friends follow this blog, as well as my parents. And yes, damn the torpedoes, I am. I probably should have years ago, and the only thing that held me back was not a fear of pain or permanence, but concern that I couldn’t give blood. I do that regularly, and the blood center finally lifted the ‘no ink’ ban. As for the design, the original ‘monster’ had more of a traditional ‘sea monster on the chart’ look about it, but I wanted my sea monster to have a slight bit of a sturgeon look. Here on the Hudson, Atlantic sturgeon still lurk in the depths, and despite their gentle demeanor, they have that wonderfully prehistoric appearance that early sailors could have mistaken for a monster.

But the point of this post is not so much the decision I’m making as it is the reasoning behind it.  The sea monster, to me, is a personal representation of my work. Years of work, past, present, and future. No one else would know it from looking at the art, but I know, and that’s what matters. And I know, among those of us here on this blog, those little details sneak into our lives. Look at our boats. Rough Draft. Talespinner. Annabel Lee. My boat was named for Annabel, one of the characters in my stories, and for several years now the books have supported the boat’s care and feeding. So my question to everyone out there is, in what other ways has your writing woven its way through your daily life?

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Sometimes surrender is your best option

Mark on the foredeck of the Islander 44 KATHI II taking aim

by Christine Kling

The little marina where we docked in Hilo, Hawaii was in a corner of the big commercial port and right alongside the US Coast Guard base. Most of the guys stationed there spent their time serving watches manning the 95-foot cutter tied up at the end of the line of yachts.

Jim and Mark already had visas for French Polynesia that they had acquired in Honolulu, but I set about inquiring how to get a visa in Hilo. I needed a new smallpox vaccination and a raft of additional paperwork.

While we were waiting for word on my visa, we discovered that in their off time, the Coasties had set up a volleyball court outside their shoreside barracks. Those were simpler times when our armed forces didn’t have the kind of security around their compounds like they do today, so we soon joined their afternoon games. The problem was that these guys played volleyball all the time and they were really good. Inevitably, whatever team we were on lost. After a couple of days of getting razzed about this, Mark and Jim decided to get revenge.

In the stores on board, Jim had lots of rubber tubing to repair a Hawaiian sling and swatches of leather for chafe gear. Out came the sailmaker’s ditty bag and with needle and palm, and by morning, we had a water balloon slingshot that we strung between the forestay and the shrouds. We established a firing routine where I was the ammunition loader at the galley sink, Jim was the runner, and Mark manned the “gun.” We waited until one particular nemesis was on deck watch, then fire one!

We lobbed our first shot over the two boats docked between us and the cutter and since it was the first shot, it missed him by about 15 feet and exploded against the deck house making a very satisfactory noise.

You should have seen those guys scramble. At first they didn’t know what it was. They pointed at the side of the deck house and scratched their heads. Lest we cause some sort of international incident, Jim hollered, “Fire two!” And this time, the balloon landed at the feet of the investigating party and splashed their ankles. They turned around. They pointed at our boat. Fire three! 

For the rest of the afternoon, we attempted to nail anyone who appeared on deck. Our biggest problem was aiming. To travel that distance we had to lob our balloons way up into the air, and they started spotting the balloons dropping from the sky and side stepping them.

At the volleyball game that evening, we were so smug. For some reason, though, those guys weren’t giving us our due. In fact they were acting like they knew something we didn’t. We figured they were just bluffing.

The next afternoon, we decided to try something different. The bow on the Kathi II was very narrow, so we tried putting Mark in his safety harness rigged like a hiking harness, so he could lean farther out and stretch the slingshot back. With his feet on the toe rail he was suspended outboard, and he was able to increase the velocity and land a few direct hits. We were so proud of ourselves until . . . BAM!

The first return shot sounded like somebody had lit off a cherry bomb. It seems while some of the crew was keeping us busy playing volleyball, the other guys had been out shopping for tubing and water balloons and making up their own slingshot. While our boat had about 8 feet of beam on the foredeck, those guys had 20 feet of beam. BAM!

Jim and I both raced for cover down below leaving Mark dangling over the side and unable to pull himself back inboard. The other problem was that while we were enthusiastic amateur gunners, those Coasties were pros. By the third shot, they not only had a far more efficient loading line going, but they were awesome at recalibrating their aim. The next one hit right at Mark’s feet and it was remarkable how with the right motivation, he was quite able to pull himself back aboard, get out of the harness and scramble below.

Over the next 24 hours, we discovered another drawback to our situation. On the cutter, there were guys standing watches around the clock. Those night watch guys didn’t see why the day watch should have all the fun. Try sleeping when you have water balloons whistling in and exploding against your hull around the clock. The next day they kept us pinned down inside the boat for most of the day. Sometimes surrender is your best option. Eventually, we tied a white T-shirt to the boat hook and raised the white flag out the forepeak hatch.

Of course, the Coasties wouldn’t let us live it down, so soon our captain decided that perhaps I wouldn’t need a visa to enter French Polynesia. We made our last trip to the grocery store and headed out.

As it turned out, my mom needn’t have worried about me being the one girl with two guys. Around day seven, Jim’s homemade self-steering gear broke. The stresses on that servo-pendulum type gear when beating to weather in 25 knot seas were just too much. That Islander 44 had a tiller and for the next 10 days we were hand steering on watch. We were only doing 2 on 2 off because of the strength required. I usually steered with my feet because my arms didn’t have the strength. Several times Jim, when the weather was particularly bad and I was exhausted, Jim offered to stand my watch for me. I wasn’t about to give in and show weakness. As the days went by, I grew stronger. I even got good enough at multitasking that I could steer with my feet, read a book and eat at the same time.

On that passage, Jim taught me to do the calculations to work a sight, and I started practicing taking sun shots. We used these old editions of H.O. 214 with a different volumes for each 10 degrees of latitude. For our time, we had a chronometer in a wooden box and an all-band receiver which we tuned in to “Greenwich Mean Time” to calibrate the chronometer whenever we could get the signal. Between the cooking, the navigation, the steering and the sleeping, the days passed fairly quickly. Because I didn’t have real foul weather gear — only a rain suit I’d bought at a drug store — I spent most of those 17 days soaked to the skin.

So on day 17 it was with great joy that we sighted the island of Nuku Hiva. Little did I know that only a few days later I would be hauled into the Gendarme’s office and accused of gun smuggling.

Fair winds!

Christine

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Skuke – Are you one, too?

I never thought I’d be called a Skuke. Hell, for the longest time I didn’t know the term. Few people do. I only happened upon it by chance.

This all started at a football game some years ago. I was tailgating with friends when I noticed a pickup truck sporting a sticker that designated our town by the shore. It’s a small little place so I went over and said hello to one of the NFL revelers.

After a brief exchange I walked away and overheard, “Who was that?”

“He was a Skuke,” was the response. I remember the tone. It was very factual.

I made a mental note, but like other such notes it was lost for a period of years. It did ultimately reemerge. The date is easy to recall. The Red Sox were on the verge of winning the 2007 World Series and I was in a local bar. Or should I say, a bar of locals.

By the third or fourth inning I was into a lengthy conversation with the man on my right who was telling me all about his early days in our agrarian town by the sea. Ours is a community where even today it’s not uncommon to pass a tractor on the road. But the story I was hearing was even more rural, one that featured boy who trapped and skinned mink, mailing the pelts to some faraway place for a buck or two a piece.

(Sharing the road by the sea.)

By the seventh or eighth inning the noise level in the bar rose as the championship drew closer to realization. Sometime at that point my old memory bank clicked. “Hey, by the way, what’s a Skuke?” I asked.

His eyes moved away from the world series game for a moment. There was the briefest pause. “A summer person.”

“A Skuke?”

“Yeah, someone who doesn’t live here year round.”

I nodded. “But what is it? What’s in the name, what’s the term Skuke come from?”

My friend at the bar turned from the game again. “They call summer people Skukes because of the planting season – people who are here between the Squash and Cukes season.”

Oh, I thought, and we refocused on the game, the exchange being one more entry into the memory bank.

Fast forward closer to the present when I found myself with a friend who happened to grow up in this same coastal town. Being an author and all I rolled-out the above story.

“Well, not really,” my friend told me.

“Not really what?”

“A Skuke. It’s a type of bird.”

“A bird?”

“Skukes are birds that move into another bird’s nest, use it, crap in it, and then they leave.”

My thought went back to the football game, the casual comment, “He was a Skuke.” I thought, too, to my bar room buddy who gave me the sanitized version of the term. Ouch.

I am sure locals can document numerous examples of how their community has been abused by others, but they may not be alone – I chuckled when my brother Frederic recently sent me the below David Sipress cartoon from the New Yorker.

It seems there are more Skukes among us than previously thought.

Perhaps we should just re-start our thinking, withhold judgement, and jointly confess the Skuke-like habits we all exhibit. Maybe then we can begin taking better care of this nest of ours.

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Written in Water: An Uncharted Life Aboard a Wooden Boat

Welcome to our guest writer on the water, Laura McCrossin. Laura is the owner of the lovely ketch Annie Laurie pictured above in Gloucester, MA. She is also the author of Written in Water: An Uncharted Life Aboard a Wooden Boat. Let’s welcome her here to Write on the Water!

It was 7 years ago last month when I first called Annie Laurie my home. I had very little clue of what I was getting myself into when I bought the 40-foot LOA Nova Scotian-built wooden ketch with the intention of living aboard, nor had I imagined any of the journeys I would potentially embark upon with her.  I was taking life one day at a time, and when something felt right, I went with it.  There were times when I would later doubt and question why my heart or intuition led me in one direction and not another, but more often than not, I’ve managed to find a reason, or at least the ultimate good, that came from listening to that inner voice.

So many times over the years, I’d find myself in a given country, or anchorage, and if I was having a bad day (arriving in Mexico in complete darkness, no chart (my bad), improperly placed channel markers (their bad), sandbar…) or if things were otherwise unpleasant (discovering my boyfriend had been unfaithful (his bad) and having five weeks together in an anchorage in Isla Mujeres to quietly ponder that) then my thoughts would unfailingly drift back to the first day I’d laid eyes upon Annie Laurie in Nova Scotia, and I’d ask myself, why?

Why had I, in my 26th year, chosen this lifestyle?  Did I have a clear reason back then for fighting for three months to find a way to make Annie Laurie mine? From practically begging a series of banks for a loan, to dealing with the upset widow who was selling the boat after her husband died too suddenly and too young, the purchase process was a challenge.  But oh, I do love a challenge.

Did I fight for the sake of fighting, and fail to question why I was fighting so hard?  There were so many roadblocks during those days, and had I interpreted the signs a little differently, they all would have clearly stated: This is not meant to be.  But, I chose an alternative translation: If it were simple, everyone would be doing it!  And therefore, I never gave up.

And in return, this small wooden vessel has introduced me to some of my favorite places, and many of my truest friends.  I’ve had a plethora of life-changing experiences in these 7 years, and have probably cried more than in the 26 years preceding them.  But I’ve also never laughed harder, loved more deeply, or experienced more awe-inspiring moments than I had before that foggy July day in 2006.  If I’d chosen to give up, and continued my life ashore, working an easy office job in the city, that road certainly would have had its hardships too.  It’s just easy to question where you went wrong in life when those hardships come to pass.

And so it is, that just as some things require fighting for, others aren’t meant to be. As the nature of life and living aboard boats are equally unpredictable and without any measure of certainty, their waters, though sometimes stormy, will always remain navigable.  And as long as you have a boat, there’s always an underlying excitement of where, and to whom she might lead you next.

 

Laura McCrossin was born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and began her sailing career on tall ships in 2001.  For the last 7 years, she has enjoyed the freedom of sailing her wooden ketch from Canada to Cuba, Mexico, the Bahamas, and currently calls the Miami River her home.  She is author of “Written in Water: An Uncharted Life Aboard a Wooden Boat”, available on Amazon.

For more information about Laura visit her website at www.scotiansailor.com.

 

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August doldrums…

It would appear I’m presently mentally becalmed, blog-wise. That’s not to say I’m not writing, in fact I’ve been writing more in recent days than I’d been in quite some time, and I’m spending more time than ever not-quite-on, but right near, the water. It’s just that currently I’m adrift in a void of inspiration when it comes to today’s post. Here I sit at my keyboard, high and dry, up on the hard and going nowhere.  Usually, somewhere along the week some idea takes root, and by Thursday I’m happily typing away. But not today.

Writers’ block. It sneaks up on us all from time to time, but eventually it will pass.

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The first liar doesn’t have a chance

The Kathi II built by Jim Kling sailing in the Alenuihaha Channel

by Christine Kling

We’ve had some shake ups with our schedule here at Write on the Water what with Mike deciding to take a break from blogging for the summer (anybody want to place a bet that he can stay away that long?) and with me deciding that I would like to have an opportunity to tell old sea stories. So, John Urban was kind enough to agree to do his bi-weekly blog on Tuesdays now, and I’ll be stepping back in time on Wednesdays. John’s fans, and I know he has many (including me) will find him here at WOW next week on Tuesday and then every other Tuesday after that.

As most of you know, I write fiction. That’s my main thing, if you will. But I wanted to try my hand at writing some memoir pieces about the many sailing adventures I’ve had in my life. Jim Kling, RIP, my husband of 21 years, used to say that when sailors get together “The first liar doesn’t have a chance.” For those of us who have been sailing and cruising over the last forty years like I have, you will “get it” that sailing stories, like good wine, need to be aged in order to be properly, shall we say, emphasized? Please note I did not say exaggerated. Heaven forbid. Tristan Jones, RIP, would know exactly what I mean.

These stories will not appear in chronological order and the photos I have to go with them are in very bad shape, but hopefully some of this will make sense.

In the spring of 1975, I decided I wanted to be the first woman to sail around the world singlehanded. I’d just turned 21 years old and my favorite book in the world was Robin Lee Graham’s Dove. I dreamed of sailing wing and wing into exotic anchorages and writing stories about my experiences that would one day sell as my first published book. That my sailing experience consisted of sneaking my father’s Venture 21 out for day sails and a gig as a cook on a Baltic Trader motoring from La Paz, Baja up to Long Beach, CA did not bother me. I believed in the adage, ‘If there’s a will, there’s a way,’ and I decided to drop out of college and head to Hawaii looking for a boat going to the South Pacific. My plan was to spend a year getting the sea time and to learn celestial navigation along the way, then search for sponsors to help me buy a boat.

So that spring my roommate Linda and I flew to Maui and I brought my 10-speed bike as part of my baggage. We had plans to sleep on the beach, explore the islands and search for a boat that needed crew. Linda soon headed back to California, but I stayed on and I found a permanent place to sleep when I met Jack. He lived aboard a 25-foot lapstrake wooden Folkboat in Lahaina harbor that was med-moored to the seawall. Next to him was a catamaran and Jack assured me that the owner wouldn’t mind if I slept in the cat’s foreword netting. I knew that to find a crew spot, I had to be where the boats were, and I was thrilled to be off the beach.

In the village of Lahaina, I found a shop that was selling unbleached muslin shirts and drawstring pants to their then-hippy-clientele that had posted a help wanted ad. They needed a seamstress to to create their inventory. I was paid by the piece and the back room of that boutique became my own sweatshop as I sewed by day and hung out at the Pioneer Inn at night searching for a boat headed for the South Pacific in need of crew.

One day the owner of the boutique came into the back room and told me that she had a customer out front who wanted a pair of shorts made out of custom material that he would provide. I ventured out into the sales area like a mole blinking in the light. I met this tall bearded stranger with a rolled up bit of sailcloth who wanted me to make him a pair of shorts out of the Dacron from a used sail. As I measured his waist, and, ahem, inseam, and thighs, I asked him why on earth he wanted shorts made out of sailcloth. He said he and his friend were headed for the South Pacific.

“Really?” I said. “And when do you plan to leave?”

“As soon as you finish my shorts,” he said.

Over the next couple of days as I sewed his shorts and various other projects, I asked my friend Jack what he thought. I had seen the guy’s boat moored along the seawall, and I liked it. So did Jack, but as I explained, “You know, I have my reservations. How smart can he be if he wants shorts made out of sailcloth? The fabric doesn’t breathe and it’s going to chafe the bejesus out of his tender bits.” But determined as I was, I practiced my speech and when he returned to pick up those shorts, I made my pitch.

I said, “I’m looking for a boat going to the South Pacific. I want to get sailing experience and I want to learn celestial navigation. But I don’t want to be the cook or the captain’s girlfriend. I want to be one of the crew. I want to be treated as an equal. If we all cook and we all stand watches, I would really love to become part of your crew.”

Years later, Jim told me how cheeky he thought I was. I told him how dumb I thought he was to want shorts made out of Dacron. We were both right.

In two days, I quit my job, sold my bicycle, and rolled up my sleeping bag from the catamaran’s netting. I moved on board the Islander 44 named Kathi II (after his daughter) with crew member Mark, we departed from Lahaina and headed through the Alenuihaha Channel for a 36 hour sail to Hilo.

The Islander 44 is a Bill Lapworth design, long and narrow, and she heels over ’til the winches have rooster tails of water shooting into the air. That channel can be rough, and the twelve foot seas we had that night were no exception. I remember telling Jim and Mark that I just loved the fresh air so much I would prefer to sleep in the cockpit that night, when in fact I was afraid to go below for fear I would puke.

Little did I know that was just a warm up. After a crazy stay in Hilo where we declared war on the US Coast Guard (that’s another story), we had a 17-day passage — all dead to weather — to arrive at Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas.

Fair winds!

Christine

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Wind brings sinus troubles

My apologies, but with the winds we’ve been having here in the Florida Keys, especially in and around Key West my sinus are killing me. Had a 3 pm doctor appointment Monday, but his office called to change it to today. Seems there was an emergency at the hospital he had to attend. You ask me, he has his priorities wrong when I am suffering at home. There are lots of doctors at the hospital.

Good news, and I owe some of you thanks for it, is that To Beat the Devil is still on the 100 best list at the Kindle store. Mystery/thriller/terrorism.

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Finding balance

Off Luzon, Philippines, setting for Dragon’s Triangle

by Christine Kling

You know, the thing about blogging for me is that I use it to find out what I think — what I believe. And right now I want to know how on earth I can find some balance in my life.

There are writers who have only one passion in in life. They do the every day living stuff like grocery shopping, talking to friends and family, and washing their hair — and they write. They are the ones who write several books per year. They are 100% devoted to the life of the writer. I envy them sometimes.

You will also find boaters/sailors who are 100% devoted to their lifestyle. When it comes to conversation, that’s all they can talk about —their recent boat projects and their voyages and their future plans for voyages. You will recognize them because their boats are gorgeous, pristine, the center of their lives. I envy them, too.

Here at Write on the Water, you find split personalities. We are boaters AND writers. So, I guess you could say we do a half-assed job of everything. You can recognize us by the sad state of the maintenance of our (well mine anyway) boats. My boating friends look at my boat and they make snide remarks about the raggedy finish of my teak and the fact that nothing makes it to the top of my must-do maintenance list unless it’s desperate.

And my writing friends giggle when I insist that I am not willing to give up on making this deadline.

It’s really difficult to do both — especially at that 100% level. It’s also really difficult to do 50/50 days. I’ve tried to do days where I work on my writing for x number of hours and then I do some boat work for x hours. It never works for long. I wind up with half-finished chapters and teak that’s sanded but never varnished or winches and pumps that are disassembled and never rebuilt. I also envy people who are good at the 50/50 days.

Right now my boat work list includes removing and rebedding all 10 port lights, rebuild (replace seals) for the raw water pump on the engine, replace teak and holly cabin sole, refinish all interior and exterior teak, replace rub rail, and on and on. I can’t even contemplate doing any of that while trying to finish this book.

Then on top of all that, I’ve just returned from a week away at a family reunion. It had been years since my siblings and I had been together along with our children, and I felt it was important to go — even though a week without writing was the absolute LAST thing I could afford right now. But my brother has a Yorkie too, so it was a human family reunion and the Terror got to spend time with his cousin Yorkie! They were adorable. Yet I have this deadline hanging over me, and I really want to get this book done on time.

Okay. I know there are some of you who follow this blog who are saying, “Hey, you just returned from almost 4 months in the Bahamas. Quit your bitching.” But the fact is that most days in the islands, I spent on my boat at my computer working on the book. I never once took a day off to go snorkeling. I felt it was good productive time. I’ve written 45 chapters and roughly 60,000 words.  I read tons of stuff and worked on figuring out characters and plot and details for this story. But these big thrillers I’m trying to write are so friggin’ long. It’s hard for me to hold it all in my head. Sometimes, I go back and read what I wrote 2 weeks ago and I don’t even remember writing it. I have no idea if other writers experience the same thing.

I am trying to live this simple life of living aboard my boat and writing books to make my living. I want to be some super yogi zen person who has it all figured out — when in fact my life is about as out of balance as it can get.

I really try hard to do the right thing in every circumstance, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day to always be right. There are always emails I have not answered, ideas I have not written down, financial details I have not recorded, log books I have not entered, sun screen I have not slathered, diets I have not followed,  phone calls I’ve not returned, books I have not written, oil (boat or car) I have not changed and word counts I have not met.

This is me taking a deep breath . . . . okay. I guess it comes down to finding some kind of balance, I must prioritize. Everything must go on a scale and be weighted. Given the very short time I have left, I have to make some serious decisions if I expect to meet this deadline. And right now, the most important thing in my life is to finish this book. For the next couple of months, boat be damned — even washing my hair or watching TV can’t matter, I’ve got to write. I am not going to accept failure.

So, here we go. For the next few months, you won’t be hearing much about boating (in the present, anyway) from me. I’m gonna be all about the book. It’s called Dragon’s Triangle and it’s a helluva tale. I’m going to be living it, eating it, sleeping it and blogging it. So you know what? The hell with balance. Sometimes, you’ve just gotta do what you gotta do.

Fair winds!

Christine

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Bored? Good!

C.E. Grundler

If you’re a writer, that is. Or an artist, or an inventor, or just about any other creative sort. Because a bored mind is a restless one, and restless minds are the breeding ground for inspiration.  Bored minds wander into new and unexplored places. Imaginations thrive within bored minds. Boredom is the not-so-wicked step-mother of invention. And this is why I worry where our world is headed these days.

Think about it. In generations past, school was a breeding ground for boredom. I recall years of daydreaming, staring out the window listlessly, only barely tuned into the day’s lessons while my mind was miles away… often far out to sea on a small boat. My parents can confirm this. They endured years of notes I reluctantly ferried home, explaining how their child refused to pay attention and participate with the rest of the class. This was in the days before wired classrooms and a laptop on every desk. School was boring. Painfully boring, and so I escaped in my own personal way. I drew boats in my notebooks and filled pages with imaginary adventures far more interesting than anything on the chalk board. And I remember family road trips to all ends of the country – days of driving and endless boredom as the miles rolled past. Yeah, my parents would toss us a few comic books, and it wasn’t long before my brother and I had read them all cover to cover – several times over. And then I was back into the realm of my imagination, building further on my imaginary world and adventures.

But these days kids aren’t  bored in the backs of cars. No. Little color screens provide them with movies and video games to pass the miles contently, never to whine, “Are we there yet?” Classrooms bristle with the latest technology, guaranteed to make every lesson a lesson in stimulation, guaranteed to keep little minds brimming with enrichment. And it’s not that I’m knocking modern education. I’m simply saying there might be a downside. Even toddlers and infants aren’t safe. I regularly see parents placing junior into the shopping cart or stroller, then immediately firing up the electronic entertainment to keep them occupied through whatever shopping ordeals lie ahead. And it’s not just children. Anywhere you find people waiting – the bus terminal, a doctor’s office, the movie theater – the majority of the eyes are focused on the colorful glow of smart phones in hand. They’re surfing, playing games, updating their status. But they aren’t bored. That’s the wonder of our modern world. And that’s what worries me.

If people have forgotten how to be bored, are their creative skills, the ability to simply daydream, to imagine eroding as well?

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Lessons from the blog

by Christine Kling

It is 1:00 a.m. in the wee hours of a Friday night, and I am sitting on top of the covers of the bed in a motel room in a suburb of Chicago trying to come up with something to write for my blog this week. My sister and the Yorkshire Terror are sound asleep in the bed next to me, both of them snoring, but I am sitting here after a very long day struggling to come up with a subject to write about. Right now, I would really love to just lie back against the covers and fall sound asleep like the rest of the crew in this room. I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine and I am so sleepy. But I have a blog to write and it’s something I have to do.

I’ve come to Chicago for a family reunion which has nothing to do with either writing or sailing, the two subjects we write about here on this blog, but as I sit here thinking, it occurs to me that blogging is exactly the thing I want to write about tonight.

I’ve been here many times before. No, I don’t mean this hotel room or this city. I mean I have found myself in this circumstance when everyone else is sound asleep, and I am sitting up pouring my heart onto the page and wondering if my words  are connecting with anyone out there in cyberspace. There are those who say that in this age of Twitter and many other social networks that are starting up every day that blogging is so over done and nobody reads blogs anymore.

I joined Mike in writing posts for this blog back in the beginning when he started Write on the Water. My first post appeared here in March of 2010. That is a long time to be blogging weekly, and I’m pleased to say I have made every week since then with only a very few exceptions.

Most writers get involved with blogs with the idea that it will get their name out there and their primary purpose is name recognition. They want to use the blog for self-promotion. And I was thinking along those lines, too, back in 2010 when I began contributing to this blog.

But oddly enough, it hasn’t turned out that way. Most of the time what I blog about has nothing to do with the books I am writing and I forget to put book links at the end of the blog. But having to blog once a week has strengthened my writing muscles. Writing is absolutely a skill at which one gets better with practice.

Not only that, blogging has helped me to clarify my thinking as I have gone through this process of changing into a self-publishing writer. Sometimes we just don’t know what we think until we are forced to write it down. The action of putting thoughts into words has helped me to steer my path through this ever-changing world of publishing.

The strange thing is — I enjoy blogging. It’s one of those things that hurts so much it feels good, if you know what I mean. It’s like jogging or eating cauliflower. I think that having to come up with new topics and words every week has helped to make me a better writer. I am more disciplined (although admittedly I still have a ways to go on this) and I have learned how to stretch as a writer.

This idea of stretching doesn’t mean stretching out your words and trying to add filler. By stretching, I mean reaching beyond that first facile idea. Digging deeper to find new ways of looking at a topic. It means reaching within myself to find my voice and walking all around a topic to make sure I am looking at it from all sides. And finally, it is learning to write from the gut and not being afraid to expose one’s own under-belly or short comings.

So, when Mike announced on the blog on Monday that he was taking the rest of the summer off, it got me to thinking. Because I have learned so much from these years of blogging, I have decided to start blogging twice a week to help add more fresh content and to further sharpen my writing skills.

I have always dreamed of writing a memoir about my 30+ years of sailing, and I know from my time spent polishing some of my yarns about my early years on the water that I have more than a few funny stories to tell.  I’ve asked to pick up a second day just to write more of these memoir pieces. I’ll keep doing the same thing on Fridays, but I’ll start adding in some old sailing stories on some of our free weekdays as well.

What do you think about blogging? Is it dead? Am I crazy to decide to try for more blogging? Am I going to burn out? Let me know what you think.

Fair winds!

Christine

 

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