If they mean, what you have experienced personally - Yes, and No.
Just think how poor literature would be without the boundless imagination of writers. I have always been fascinated and grateful to be able to escape to exotic places with larger-than-life characters. So what if I have to look up words and places? It’s a wonderful way to learn and grow, as I have with the great writers.
On the other hand, personal experiences inevitably do slip into our own writing. You can’t help it, no matter how brilliant your research or how faraway a setting is. People we know, love–or don’t love quite so much–find their way into our characters, changing to our whim like chameleons.
After I published KHAMSIN, The Devil Wind of The Nile, a novel about Ancient Egypt, some people did ask me if I had been “there.” In 3080 BC, nobody’s been there. Everything else can be gleaned from pouring over the many great archaeological outpourings. In weaving it all together, of course, we are on your own.
Then came SIROCCO, Storm over Land and Sea. Now, here I did draw on my own sailing/cruising experience and the intimate knowledge of life on a sailboat. I also vividly remember the not-so-pleasant times when our metal mast was the only thing sticking up—in a lightning storm. Suddenly, a dark shadow looms high above you riding on the crest of a monster wave—all you want to do then is to run home to mother!
When I wrote After the Cataclysm, I imagined a huge steel monster almost running the little Esperanza down and I remembers how my skipper loved to blast Wagner’s powerful music of The Flying Dutchman over the outside speakers when things got rough.
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Excerpt from After the Cataclysm -Part III, Chapter 8
© Inge H. Borg
“Shiiiiiit!”
The panic-stricken shout from inside the wheelhouse was followed by the cough of the ignition being turned over time and again. The starter didn’t catch. The wheelhouse door was ripped open. “The bastard’s going to run us down,” Sam cried into the dark cockpit.
Jonathan pushed Naunet away and jumped up, almost crumpling into the well. His left leg had fallen asleep as he had held Naunet, comforting her, assuring her that everything would turn out all right. “Get on the horn!”
Sam had already flipped the switch of the shortwave. He grasped the mike and pressed the ‘transmit’ button so hard he was afraid he would embed it into the surrounding plastic.
“Sécurité, sécurité, sécurité,” the youth cried into the mike as if the higher volume of his voice would make a difference. “This is the sailing vessel Esperanza.” He shakily gave their coordinates and heading. “Large ship bearing down on us, please alter course to west-northwest. We are unable to move out of your way.” He depressed the button. Jonathan and he held their breath for an answer hoping the other guy on watch wasn’t dozing.
Panic transmits itself quickly throughout the confines of a small boat. By now everyone crowded into the wheelhouse. They did not dare to say anything as they waited for a reply to Sam’s urgent transmission, imagining what would happen if it did not come. Too many large ships never knew they had run down a sailboat. Not until, by daylight or in the next port, they found tattered rigging dangling from one of their bow anchors. In his mind, Jonathan ticked off the steps required to release their lifeboat canister strapped down on deck in front of the main mast. Oh God, he prayed, let the damn thing cross in front of us just this one time.
“Sailing vessel Esperanza,” a pleasant, nonchalantly professional voice boomed back at them. “We have you on radar. Passing to your starboard now.”
Suddenly, the slapping of their luffing mainsail, deprived of its breeze, was eclipsed by an overwhelming rhythmic pulsing. Jonathan engaged the autopilot. It would hold the Esperanza steadier than any human could; especially since her humans did not feel steady at all. Despite the terror in their hearts, they rushed outside.
“Shiiiiiit!” Sam hollered again as he gawked up at a wall of steel towering above them, obliterating the moon. Its passage seemed to last forever. There was only the faintest of light coming from the high bridge.
Jonathan suddenly remembered that the ship had not identified herself during her last transmission. On top of it, not running any navigation lights at night was a definite no-no in any sailor’s book. “Bastard,” he breathed, and then remembered they themselves were running dark. As the moon re-emerged, he knew they would now be bounced around from the propeller wash.
“Hold on!” he shouted.
The radio in the wheelhouse crackled to life again. “God speed, sailors,” the voice said and then added, “Sorry about the wake.”
“Bastard,” Bill echoed Jonathan’s sentiment.
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