The Wind

We sailed the boat to the yard for the winter yesterday. The wind was blowing hard from the southwest, so the trip was fast, the ride a little rough. I never paid much attention to the wind before we got the sailboat, but now I think about it all summer. I often check the app that tells me the wind’s direction and strength, so that I can decide whether to text friends and make the drive to the lake. But once I get out on the water, I just feel the wind on my face, watch the telltales, and feel the boat tilt beneath me when a gust hits. You can’t see that gust coming, just the ripples on the water as it races toward you.

I’m not sure where my stories come from. My pen, I suppose. I scribble in my notebook about memories and daydreams and people that I’ve never met and problems that I’ve never wrestled with. I write about places that I’ve never been and jobs that seem interesting. I scribble until the barest shape of something that I can’t quite see begins to emerge. I don’t know that it will be a story. I just feel that it might become one.

The characters on the boat with me – friends from college, from the neighborhood, from my hockey team – determine the vibe of the sail, the nature of the discussion, the amount of beer guzzled. The wind, though, lays out the options regarding the direction and speed and the comfort of the ride. It decides whether we’ll dart twenty miles toward Michigan or sail gently across the back of the city or hug the inside of the breakwater to shelter from the waves churned up by wind out of the north. We decide whether we sail and who we sail with, but the wind decides where.

I’ve heard about writers who outline a novel before they start, and I’m jealous. My agent asks me to send him a summary of my next story before I write it, to keep me from wasting time. I’ve tried but failed. It’s in my pen, I want to say, but that sounds too precious. I must follow the characters to find the story, I want to say, but that seems like too much of a cliché. But it’s true—I must write my way toward the story. The lines of ink in my notebook tell me where the story is headed. They tell me whether to adjust the heading or let out the sheet. I sometimes wish I could do it the other way, that I could shove the story in the direction I’ve chosen. The path to completion would be so much faster, straighter, less staggering back and forth, but I’m pretty sure that finishing quickly is not what it’s all about.

The strength of the wind decides who goes on the boat. My wife only sails in moderate winds from the west. Heavy winds and I’ll want at least one other person on board who knows a jib from a jibe. And the strength of the wind affects our mood. If it blows hard, we’ll feel the adrenaline kick of speed and angle and perceived danger. But when it stops, it stops. We bob and we sweat, drifting listlessly, swatting flies. There’s no key to turn on the wind, no accelerator pedal to urge it faster. So when the wind decides that we wait, then we wait.

I sometimes get stuck. All writers do. I’ve read about other writers who employ elaborate rituals to battle past writer’s block, but I’ve found only one strategy that works for me: keep writing. I sit down at my desk at the same time as always, for the same number of hours, and I scribble on page after page of my notebook. I write about the plot and the characters. I write scenes that I know will never fit. I write gibberish. I write lists. I write questions. I sometimes write the same sentence over and over, page after page, but I don’t let my hand stop moving. This usually only lasts hours, sometimes days, but if I keep writing, eventually the wind picks, up and the boat starts moving again.

Sometimes, to get back to the harbor, we must sail directly toward the wind, but of course, that’s impossible. We dart back and forth, stealing the wind’s energy to shuffle toward it. When we first got the boat, I thought having the wind at our back would be the best sail, but the mainsail blocks the wind that might land on the jib. And a sudden wind shift might cause an unexpected jibe, sending the boom rattling and crashing from one to the other. We could put the spinnaker up, but that’s a lot of work and requires at least three people who know what they’re doing. Besides, it’s hard to hold a beer much less a conversation when you’re flying the spinnaker, and I’m all about staying centered on priorities. So sailing, for me, is all about oblique angles. Nothing direct. I’ve learned to look toward the wind, and whatever story I’m writing, out of the corner of my eye.