A Windless Day

The “sail” that hooked us on sailing wasn’t a sail at all. It was a very long, windless day on Lake Superior with five adults and four children crammed into my brother’s 18-foot Precision sailboat, Scheherezade.

We had joined up with my parents, brothers, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew to visit Washburn, Wisconsin, where my father grew up. They stayed in a motel, but we camped at the nearby Red Cliff Indian Reservation. We soon discovered that my first-cousin-once-removed Mike Keur and his family happened to be camping there, too. Mike’s daughters surrounded Caroline in age (one a year older and one a year younger), and Caroline and John enjoyed playing with them.

My older brother, Donald, had brought his sailboat, and he offered to take the Camps and the Keurs sailing around the Apostle Islands. It sounded good to us, so five adults and four children crammed into his 18-foot boat and took off.

There was very little wind when we left. We tried putting the sails up, but they didn’t do us any good. Although Donald hadn’t topped off his gas tank, he thought he had plenty because the wind was sure to come up in the afternoon. This was Lake Superior, after all. So we motored to Oak Island, where we ate our lunch and “mountain” climbed up a short cliff using a rope that was there for the purpose. The children had a great time. But when we got back on the boat, there was still no wind.

Donald was confident that the wind would blow later in the afternoon, so we motored to Raspberry Island and visited the old lighthouse there. Then we headed for home. Still no wind, and Donald had to motor very slowly to make the most of the little gas remaining. We had eaten all the food on board long before, and we were all hungry. Donald had a port-a-potty but no place to put it except in the cabin. Although we promised we wouldn’t look, the girls were too embarrassed to use it.

We were running on fumes by the time we found a yacht club with a gas pump and a restroom. Unfortunately, the facilities were only open to yacht club members. When they saw the children, however, they took pity on us and let us get gas and use the toilet.

Those needs had been met, but we were still hungry. It was 9:00 p.m. by the time we got back, and we all headed to town for pizza.

Then Roland said he wanted to buy a sailboat. I had two conditions: that it have an enclosed head and a galley where we could keep extra food in case we got caught out on the water at mealtime.

In spite of the mishaps, we enjoyed the peacefulness that comes with sailing. (And we had gone on a short sail a couple of days earlier where we actually sailed, so we weren’t basing our decision entirely on that one long day.)

So we bought our own boat, and the adventures began.

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The first picture shows Donald, the Camps, and the Keurs on Oak Island. The second shows Caroline and John on Scheherezade.

Sell the Boat but Keep the Memories

After 25 years of sailing, Roland and I are headed for dry dock. In other words, we are selling our sailboat with no plans to replace it. For the last few years, we have spent more time maintaining it than sailing it. As we grow older, we are also more uncomfortable sailing in heavy weather (or even lightly heavy weather) than we used to be. So the time has come to sell the boat.

But we are keeping the memories.

Although this is a writing blog, I’m going to detour from writing advice for the next few weeks in favor of those memories. A detour, but not a change in destination. After all, one of the purposes of this blog is to encourage people to write down their memories. Maybe you can get some tips from reading mine.

Listed by year, here are a few of the highlights:

• 1991—This is the year we “caught the bug” while spending a windless day on Lake Superior in my brother’s sailboat.
• 1992—We purchased our first boat, a used 23-foot Beneteau First 235, which we named Das Zeltlagermanie (Camp Mania).
• 1993—Our first overnight sailing trip took us to Michigan.
• 1995—We drove the boat to DeTour Village, Michigan with a plan to sail the North Channel. The plan didn’t work out, but that’s a story for another post.
• 2002—Goodbye, Das Zeltlagermanie, hello, Freizeit (Free Time). We moved up to a new 34-foot Beneteau 331.
• 2003—A trip to Milwaukee inaugurated our new boat.
• 2007—We finally made it to the North Channel.
• 2008—Freizeit became our temporary home after the remnants of Hurricane Ike flooded us out of our permanent one.
• 2011—Our vacation took us sailing up the eastern coast of Lake Michigan. Although we didn’t know it at the time, this turned out to be our last extended trip. We planned another one—twice—but it was cancelled because of equipment failures.
• 2016—Goodbye, Freizeit.

The boat at the top of the page is Freizeit, and the one at the bottom is Das Zeltlagermanie. Both boats created unforgettable memories.

Next week I’ll talk about the “sail” that started it all.

Foreshadow It

Have you ever read a book where a weapon magically appeared in the protagonist’s hands just when he or she needed it most? That’s okay if the protagonist has been set up as a magician who can create things out of thin air, but it doesn’t work for ordinary men and women.

That’s an extreme example, of course, but less egregious errors abound. A mother goes to the medicine cabinet and takes out an infrequently prescribed medication that just happens to cure her son’s rare disease. Or a seemingly frail and defenseless protagonist saves the day by using karate to disarm the antagonist. These sudden surprises don’t heighten the tension—they simply lessen the scene’s believability.

If a character is going to use a particular object or skill at a crucial point in the book, use foreshadowing to make the scene realistic. Provide a reason for the medication to be in the medicine cabinet. Show us the protagonist earning her black belt. A few words may be enough, but they must be there.

One of my plot twists in Creating Esther involves a fire escape and a canvas bag. When the scene begins, Ishkode grabs the bag and surreptitiously borrows a key to unlock the door to the fire escape. But how does she know where the bag and the key are? This knowledge shouldn’t come out of thin air any more than a weapon should. I solved that problem by providing the answers in advance.

Accounting for the whereabouts of the key was easy. I simply added an earlier scene with a fire drill, where the matron pulls out her key chain and unlocks the door. That scene worked with the story even standing alone because it showed the conditions at the school. But I also used it to foreshadow two separate plot twists.

The canvas bag was more of a problem. I didn’t want Ishkode grabbing a bag that she hadn’t noticed before, and I didn’t want it suddenly appearing in a convenient place, either. So what did I do? I threw a brief mention into an earlier chapter. Ishkode is sweeping a floor when a messenger tells her that a friend is seriously ill and asking for her. This paragraph follows:

In a rush to leave, Ishkode threw the broom into the closet and knocked a canvas bag off a shelf. Not waiting to pick it up, she ran out of the room, then slowed down before entering the infirmary. Aamoo mustn’t know how worried Ishkode was.

That’s the only mention of the canvas bag until the scene where it becomes important. The reader will probably even forget about it in the meantime. But this brief paragraph answers the question of how Ishkode knew where to find the canvas bag when she needed something to hold—

No, I won’t tell you what she put in the bag. That gives away too much of the plot.

If you want to keep your scenes realistic, plant uncommon objects and skills before you need them.

Your readers will appreciate it.

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The photograph at the head of this post shows a fire escape at the now abandoned Mount Pleasant Indian Boarding School. I took the picture last year on my research trip to Ojibwe country.

Deus Ex Machina: A Literary Device to Avoid

About ten years ago, I bought and read a middle-grade book called The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau. It got rave reviews, and I understood why as I read most of the story. But then I got to the end, where the author used deus ex machina to set up the next book in the series. That soured me on the author and even on the book I had already read. I never did read the rest of the series, and the only reason I still have my copy of the first book is because it is such a good example of the modern use of this trick.

So what is deus ex machina? It is a literary device that employs an unexpected and improbable person or event to resolve a seemingly unresolvable problem. The phase is Latin for “God in the machine” and comes from a practice used by the ancient Greek playwrights. They would get their mortal characters into a mess that no human being could untangle, and then a god or goddess would suddenly show up and make everything right.  

SPOILER ALERT: If you plan on reading The City of Ember, you might want to stop reading this post here.

In The City of Ember, the two protagonists leave their doomed underground city and discover the world above. Although our heroes find the way out, nobody else knows it and there is no way to return with the information. So how will the protagonists pass on their knowledge and save the citizens of Ember?

Conveniently, they find a tunnel on a hillside and crawl into it with a candle for light. Conveniently, they discover that the tunnel ends in the nick of time and avoid falling into a deep pit. Conveniently, the hole goes all the way down to Ember (which is about as realistic as people digging their way to China). Conveniently, they have a message with them that warns the citizens of Ember and gives the escape route. So the protagonists throw the message down the hole and, conveniently, it hits somebody on the head far below.

That’s too many coincidences for my taste.

Maybe you want to use a particular resolution in your story, and it sounds too much like the gods intervened. Do you have to discard it altogether? Not necessarily. It may be workable if you set it up beforehand and give your human characters a significant role in the final solution.

I had that issue in Creating Esther. Vision quests are a big part of Native American culture, so I wanted to give my protagonist a vision that helps resolve the main conflict. However, I was worried that it might sound too convenient and contrived and be viewed as deus ex machina. So what did I do?

First, I wove information about vision quests into the first part of the story. Later, when Ishkode has her vision, I replicated the traditional conditions as much as possible given the story line. The setting is unusual, but the situation is not. Hopefully, this set-up will give the reader two reactions to the vision: surprise and acceptance (an “of course” response). And while the vision provides the clue to resolving the problem, the final solution is in Ishkode’s human response. She has to interpret her vision and choose whether to follow its wisdom.

The deus ex machina in The City of Ember was enough to turn me off to the book and the rest of the series. So if you want to keep your readers for subsequent books (series or stand-alones), never use deus ex machina.

Actually, never is too strong. If you are using the device intentionally as humor, go ahead. If you are really trying to show God (or a god) working miracles, you may be able to make it believable by setting the stage in advance.

But if your plot needs help, don’t expect the gods to do your work for you.

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The photograph shows a statue of the goddess Artemis, which was sculpted around 125-175 AD. I took the picture while visiting the Ephesus Museum in Turkey in 2006.

Get on with It

 

I like watching baseball, especially when the Cubs are playing. But I hate the MLB replay rules, especially this year after changes to other rules increased the number of challengeable calls.

In the “good old days,” when a manager challenged a call, the action paused. The field umpires would get together to decide whether to overturn it. Because they had to rely on what they saw at the time, they made mistakes, even after a challenge. But it probably came out even in the long run, with each team benefiting from an approximately equal number of wrong calls.

Now whenever a play is close, the action doesn’t just pause, it stops. First, the manager of the team that didn’t get the call takes his time deciding whether to challenge the play. Then, if he does, delay is extended while people who aren’t even in the park watch replays from different camera angles. Yes, they get it right most of the time, but it isn’t worth the wait.

Unfortunately, many novels are like that. The author is so interested in getting his or her message across that the action stops. Christians are among the worst offenders, here. Although there are exceptions, I rarely buy fiction from Christian publishers anymore because the message tends to overwhelm the story.

For a novelist, the only effective way to convey a message is to weave it seamlessly into the story. I’d rather interpret the clues myself than have the author stop the action to explain them. Not only is explaining the lazy writer’s way out, but it gives me a great place to put the book down.

If the baseball game is close and exciting, I may wait out the replay. If a book has a fascinating story line, I may skip over the lecture and continue reading.

But I’m more likely to keep reading if the author has already skipped the lecture.

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The photograph of Wrigley Field is © 1991 by Rick Dikeman and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation and the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. No changes have been made to the photograph other than to resize it.

Sifting through the Rubble



The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 is one of the best-documented events in history. Chicago was a newspaper town, and within 48 hours most of the major papers were back up and running. They had plenty of eyewitness accounts to choose among, including those from their owners and reporters. Other educated persons quickly published their own eyewitness accounts. Then the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners held a public inquiry, heard sworn testimony from fifty-one witnesses, and published its report—all before the end of the year.

Even so, much of the evidence is inconclusive. We know where the fire started, but we don’t know how. We don’t even know exactly when. (The evidence puts it anywhere between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.) We know that the early response to the fire was a comedy of errors (combined with circumstances beyond anyone’s control), but we don’t always know who was responsible for the errors or the reasons for them. And only God knows whether the fire could have been controlled if everything had gone right.

In 1871, even the most reputable newspapers had a taste for sensationalism. Besides that, eyewitness testimony is only as reliable as the eyewitness is. Some people misinterpret what they see, some exaggerate, and some simply make things up for effect. So how much of the eyewitness accounts can I use in my middle-grade historical novel on the Great Chicago Fire?

Take this story:

One little girl, in particular, I saw, whose golden hair was loose down her back and caught afire. She ran screaming past me, and somebody threw a glass of liquor upon her, which flared up and covered her with a blue flame.

At first glance, the story looks pretty improbable. Not because the girl’s hair caught fire—that was common. But would somebody really be mean enough to throw alcohol on her? Still, maybe it wasn’t meanness and the person was so intoxicated that he thought his drink would put out the fire like water would. Besides, the eyewitness was Alexander Frear, a visitor who was a member of the New York State Assembly and a New York City commissioner. Surely we can believe someone like that.

Maybe yes, and maybe no. I can hear you saying, “Never believe a politician.” But for me, the biggest problem with Mr. Frear’s is that it is filled with similarly dramatic events. One or two such instances might simply mean that Mr. Frear was observant and knew how to use vivid language to describe what he saw, but the entire account seems over the top.

So even if it’s true, I won’t be using the story of the girl catching fire from a liquor bath. And that’s okay, because I don’t need it. There are plenty of better documented yet still dramatic incidents scattered among the many eyewitness accounts.

It’s all a matter of sifting through the rubble.

Don't Vote for Me

Bayeux, France, © 2015 Kathryn Page Camp

No, I’m not running for public office, but I did enter an online photography competition that is part popularity contest.

I entered the two photographs included with this blog in The Times Destinations Photo Contest. The winners are chosen by viewer voting that occurs from today (August 8) through Thursday (August 11). I encourage you to go to www.nwi.com/travel and vote for your favorites. However, I am not suggesting that you vote for me.

While popularity is nice, I believe in basing choices primarily on merit. I’ve seen some of the other entries, and I’m highly unlikely to win based on either criteria. But I don’t mind. I’d rather the winners were chosen for the photograph’s merit rather than the photographer’s popularity. And that won’t happen unless a significant number of people vote for their favorite photos without regard to the photographer.

Wittenberg, Germany, © 2016 Kathryn Page Camp

Like art, merit is in the eye of the beholder. I wince every time I see an E.E. Cummings poem. It isn’t just the lack of capital letters, either, because I am equally bothered when I just listen. His poetry makes me wonder if he used gimmicks because he was too lazy to write great lines. But some people think he’s a genius. (And I do have to admit that I like “maggie and milly and molly and may.”) The merit in poetry is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder.

 

Photography works that way, too. Not everyone likes the same pictures, and that’s okay.

 

If you really like one of my entries and want to vote for it, fine. But vote for the photo.

 

Don’t vote for me.

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The first photo shows the old world charm of Bayeux, France, which is a small but vibrant town located in Normandy.

 

In the second photo, the steeples of the Town Church (St. Marien) tower over the houses lining the town square in Wittenberg, Germany.