So far, April has seemed like a month of procrastination. I’ve felt as though I was running round in circles through the manuscript for “Ghost Ship”, tweaking individual words and short phrases here and there, without making any real progress toward completion. It’s been frustrating, but difficult to break free and focus on finishing.

The bulk of the text is already written (over 120k words, so it’s a similar length to “Broken Shards”), but it still needs work on bridging between blocks of prose to give it a proper flow. Then I have one chapter that needs a full rewrite. I’m not happy about the content: it doesn’t add to the plot in any way, and only contains very minor character development or world building. I know what I want to replace it with, but haven’t put anything down in words yet.

Having originally set myself the target of “first draft” by mid February and failed, my new target was to reach that status by Easter. It’s still possible, but will require a lot of effort and concentration.

Two weekends ago, I had the pleasure of meeting another Dutch fantasy author. JNM Verboekend lives in Belgium now, but was born here in Montfoort and has just published her debut novel “The Path of Lies and Riddles”. The first part of a planned two book series, it’s written in English, and I’ve just started reading it… another distraction from my own writing. 😦

This weekend, I’ll be travelling to Ameland, the easternmost of the Dutch Wadden Islands, for a few days. One of the tales that I’ve been working on for my collection of ‘Wandelaar van de Duisternis’ short stories is set on the island, so I particularly want to explore the village of Hollum, visit the lighthouse and bunker museum, and see the dunes that cover the site of the lost village of Sier.
There’s also an interesting legend about Rixt van ‘t Oerd, a woman who lived in a home made from driftwood in the Oerderduinen (Oerd sand dunes) and made her living as a beachcomber, scavenging the items washed ashore from ships wrecked in the treacherous waters around the island. But Rixt became greedy, and set a light to guide ships, believing that they had found safe harbour, to founder on the beach. One morning finding a ship wrecked after a bad storm, she discovered that one of the drowned sailors washed ashore was her own son, Sjoerd. According to most versions of the legend, her spirit still walks the beach crying in sorrow for her dead son.
Another version of the legend has both her and Sjoerd being washed away by a large wave, while other stories call her a witch, practising dark magics and able to change herself into a black cat and invade the dreams of children.
Like Sier, the village of Oerd is also now lost to the sea. Since 1980, there has been a statue of Rixt in the village of Buren on Ameland, created by the artist Annet Haring.
While my short story makes no reference to Rixt or to Oerd, it’s potentially a theme that I might explore later in the series, with Hauke returning to Ameland at some time in the future.

And then we move into the long Easter weekend, and after that, two weeks visiting England. We’ll be spending a few days each in Cambridge, Oxford, Bath and then travelling down to Cornwall, where we’re staying on Bodmin Moor at the original Jamaica Inn, made famous in the novel by Daphne du Maurier. While I’ve given this trip to the UK a name, “Exploring Legends”, because it includes visits to the Uffington White Horse, Wayland’s Smithy, Dragon Hill, and to Tintagel and Merlin’s Cave, I can’t claim it as writing research (unless I ever start writing the series of stories I had planned many years ago about the “Raven of the Tower”).

While I might have my laptop with me while we’re travelling, I probably won’t get much work done on my writing. So I keep telling myself that a “first draft” deadline of Easter is possible, but the end of May is more likely.