an excerpt from my 750 words - february 26

in march, i'm going to devote at least some of this daily writing to the novel, even if it's just a paragraph or two, it would be good to get some solid writing in on that. i think that writing whatever is in my head here over the past month or so has cleared the way for me to really start writing something of substance. i had a lot of writing blockage to clear out. i really feel my time in lego in 2014 set up a road block to my daily writing, since there were so many secrets and i am such an immediate, here and now sort of writer. when i couldn't write about what i was doing and experiencing, i stopped writing and found it hard to get back to it. this past month has helped me over that.

yesterday, i read coleridge's rime of the ancient mariner, which is a lovely and mystical poem. i don't remember if i read it in high school or not. if i did, it didn't leave an impression. i knew a line from it, without knowing that it was from it - "water, water every where and not a drop to drink." i went looking for interpretations of the poem online and found i could have bought a few high school level papers on various websites. i did not. and it made me realize that whatever interpretation i come up with myself of the poem is as good as any. i dug in a little bit to the notion of the mariner as a wandering jew - or the biblical cain, doomed to keep wandering and telling his story to all he meets. i think it could definitely be woven into our story. i originally became interested because of the interpretation of it as related to the flying dutchman legend of a ghost ship. i quite love the supernatural in the poem, in the battle over his soul. i could definitely see some moments of the supernatural in our story, so i will work on bringing that out. surely the voyage to cape town can contain some moments of the supernatural. perhaps i have to introduce a mariner-type character among the crew, or perhaps the captain can be that kind of figure. and he could have experience with women who sail as men and he knowingly accepts lumke's disguise.

see, the ideas are already flowing. i need to do a bit of research into the actual name of the captain of lumke's ship, surely those extensive records the VOC kept have that information. i'm happy to make up a name, but since we have so many other historical, factual details, it would be good to have his real name. i just hope it's a good one. he could always have a nickname if it's not.

i do think that reading things which inspire is a key to writing. hemingway suggested that in his moveable type, and i can tell that reading the rime of the ancient mariner has sparked new ideas and moved me closer to seeing how things can come together in my own writing. everything that goes in, must come out, processed somehow and transformed into something that's my own. our own. i think that i feel a strong belief in the project all of a sudden as i write this. and that's a very awesome feeling. it wasn't that i didn't believe before, but i have felt like i couldn't really see how to get to the writing. now, i think i can.

Capturing the relentlessness of the rain

Days and days of relentless, unending rain. It seemed like there was no way it could go on, and yet it did. Grey skies, mud, puddles and even small lakes where before there had just been fields. The earth could scarcely absorb another drop, and yet the rain continued. On and on, day after day, with scarcely a moment of relief. Maybe the odd moment or two of sunshine, but always another dark bank of clouds on the horizon, promising that the sunshine would be short-lived. Temperatures hovered around 5-6°C, adding to the general sense of cold and damp. Nothing dried in these conditions. Laundry remained damp and began to smell musty. The ground water seeped up through the brick floor of the pantry. The hens, even when the door was opened so they could go out and scratch about, huddled inside, murmuring their complaints, loathe to get soaked. Even the snowdrops, normally the most hardy of souls, were tattered and drooping, their frilly white heads bowed heavily with raindrops. It didn't even really matter that the light was returning to these northern climes, as the greyness of the skies and the eternal rain, made everything colorless and cast a dusk-like pallor over the whole day. We didn't know how much more we could take.