Finding Lumka

I'm thinking about contemporary Lumka today. Who is she, how does she behave, how does she think? What does she do? I made her the owner of a vintage shop on Ravnsborggade in Copenhagen, perhaps because that's what I would love to do. It also gives a means for how she finds Captain von Dijk's journal that he kept at sea. The journal is filled with facts and thoughts and small sketches and careful measurements and observations. He has a budding scientist in his belly and he is affected by those scientist/observers of his generation to carefully observe and record - nature, the sea, but as a Captain, he is also a born storyteller, honing his craft over many voyages and he notes down many stories of life at sea. Lumka is fascinated by this and knows instinctively that the journal is a treasure. Tucked into the back of it is a letter. A letter from Lumka to Abraham after she is sent back to Europe. But, does she really go back to Europe?

Why do they both disappear from the record? Did they leave together? Where is the record of Abraham's death? Of his will? Did they flee to the Eastern Cape? Or the Western? Did they remain together and raise their daughter? How much longer would Abraham have lived? He was already very old when he married Lumke and positively ancient for those days - how much longer could he have lasted? Is the Jan Theuniz that Judith found in Stellebosch Lumke again, making her life as a man to keep her and her daughter safe? Was the society too small a place for that to have been possible? Would she be recognized?

But back to contemporary Lumka. When I tried previously to do character bible answers for her, I felt she went in a direction I didn't like and of which I didn't really have control. How to make her a character worthy of revisiting, in case this becomes a series of novels. We need her to be as lovable and brave and gutsy and unexpected as Mrs. Pollifax. How to infuse her with the qualities that make Mrs. Pollifax all those things.

I see her as pretty, mid 30s, unattached, very focused on her shop. She has to be trained somehow as a conservator perhaps? Though that makes her a little too People of Book, perhaps. It's hard to keep all influences out. And having her find the Captain's journal lends it a bit of a Dan Brown quality with the DaVinci Code. I think she's a different sort of historical detective and maybe there's no bad guys chasing her, but she's more of an uncoverer of lost stories. Now, that feels like it's getting somewhere.

Where does Lumka find the Captain's journal? On a weekend trip to Amsterdam? In a dusty antique shop there - of the kind like that amazing store front I used to drive past in Christianshavn - long forgotten and left behind, possibly ignored by heirs who never cleared it out, but finally are compelled to do so. It's inside of a metal box, like the one Lynne sent a photo of. It once had the name of the ship painted on it and it's partially visible, but very faded. No one had opened it in years and thus the journal remained safe inside. Lumka buys it, loving the weathered look of the old metal box, not even realizing the treasure it contains until she gets it back to her shop in Copenhagen.

I have to find the threads of this story and weave them together as my own...all those impressions I've gathered over a lifetime, of places that struck my fancy - like the storefront in Christianshavn, Ravnsborggade, journals and sketches seen in museums. I feel so stuck in autobiography, perhaps Lumka is a version of me and who I was in Macedonia back in the late 90s. Maybe that's how I find my way to her, to make her concrete and living, rather than just seen in glimpses at a distance in my mind. The only way she's going to come out and be who she needs to be is if I sit down and write her down every day. She will remain elusive until I commit to that. I think the time to commit is now.

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.