I grew up in Chicago and my summers were spent on Lake Michigan. I wanted my children to have that lake experience, but living landlocked in Nebraska made it difficult, until we discovered a lake a few hours away. My husband’s idea was to rent a cabin, but I dreamed of a sailboat. Put to a family vote, sailing won, and we bought the 32-foot Catalina sailboat.
Oh, did I mention, I was the only one with sailing experience?
During the summer and early fall we lived on the boat with our three children under the age of twelve, chasing the wind, up and down the twenty-five-mile lake on the vast open prairie of South Dakota. It wasn’t quite Lake Michigan but close enough.
The prairie winds often evaded us, leaving our Catalina dead in the water. We’d roll in the jib, tie down the mainsail, and drop the anchor. The kids would cannonball off the back, play water tag, or fish off the bow. When the wind returned, the captain, whoever was at the wheel, shouted orders, “hoist the anchor, let out the sails, come about,” and we were off, picking up speed as the boat heeled over, feeling the cool spray of water.
My time was early in the mornings, sitting on the back of the boat when it was blissfully quiet. The humidity hung like tulle over the still water as the sun peeked behind the scrub cedars. I held my breath as dragonflies landed, sunning their delicate wings, or as I watched lacy spider webs, spun during the night, tear apart under the weight of glistening beads of dew. It was a glorious time. I wrote feverishly, filling notebooks, generating lists of story ideas. My writing felt fresh and tantalizing.
Years later, I came across those old notebooks with swollen covers and water-marked pages, and the lists of story ideas. One idea circled was our summers sailing.
The idea sparked a memory, and I felt ready to write, but where to begin? In my writing mind, the meaning of idea, concept, and theme always ran together like rivulets feeding into the greater waterway of storytelling.
I pondered the idea and how I could form it into a concept, the genesis of a coherent essay. My first attempt: surviving a summer storm on a boat. Close, but I knew it needed to be more specific. Framing it in the form of a question might help. My next try… What if (as actually happened) a tornado struck a marina during the night where a family was staying on a sailboat? That was more specific, with compelling story elements that encompassed a dramatic event.
In my mind, a concept enfolds like a play on a stage. I had a setting, nighttime in the marina. Characters: our family of five sleeping below in our berths. The conflict was the approaching storm with no emergency warning sirens, no cell phones, only a marine radio with a robotic voice giving a weather report.
Next, I needed to think about theme. But what is theme? To me, it is the lived experience that you as the writer can use to touch the hearts of your readers, the underlying current that compels the reader to feel, understand, and ponder the story after they’ve finished reading. Sounds complicated, but not if you focus on what the characters are experiencing in that moment.
One particular night I thought about the primitive radio warning, how it was behind in tracking an approaching storm. We were desperate for more information to guide our scramble for safety in a moment’s notice: Take the kids and run for the car, hunker down in the park restroom, or stay on the boat. With no time, our only option was to stay on board. We quickly secured the lines, dropped the anchor, barely clambering below as the storm swept in.
The antagonistic storm raged, rocking us, the banging of the halyards against the metal mast, the increasing thunder, bursts of lightning and driving rain. All together it was so loud we couldn’t hear one another. Huddled together we prayed the boat was heavy enough to stay put. Minutes later came a rushing sound like a fast-moving freight train causing our ears to pop. The boat lifted and dropped.
Within minutes, the howling stopped, the wind died, and the rain let up. We ventured out like Dorothy emerging from the house in Oz. Through the darkness, we could see damaged cars in the parking lot, the restroom destroyed, motorboats wedged into trees, and an old cottonwood tree split in two. Thankfully, we were safe riding out the storm like real sailors.
Starting with an idea can feel like a tornado of energy and extremes but shaping it into a concept using questions helps to define, structure it. As you narrow the focus, your characters are there to flush out themes, meanings from their experiences.
We experienced other storms during our summers but none as scary. The kids grew up and we eventually sold the boat, but those summers sailing like writing are still in my blood.