Dodging the Skeg

My imagination is riding a very big wave today – even bigger than off Nelscott on the Oregon Coast.

Here at joecsmolen.com, in WORKS, I show where I have done some short stories and pubbed some of them and some of them are really – pretty good.

But, over a year ago, I had this grandiose idea of riding an even bigger wave than my novel Lostine.

So in Lostine’s shadow, I have been working on N3/Never – sequel to Lostine.

Have I mentioned this project is intimidating? Over 15 times yet?

But periodically, I have had incremental jumps in understanding of how I should approach N3.

I am stoked about the insight I was given on 11/21/23.

That’s when I released from of the jet-ski’s tow rope and “dropped in” – the way surfers say it when they start down the face of a really big wave.

Carving the face of my rocky-mountain-high wave, I realize that there was a 2nd unresolved issue in my original novel Lostine. The 1st one was obvious - love tossed in a dumpster by unspecified parental actions. The 2nd unresolved issue though – namely Koz’s frustrated yelling that Lostine was a “Dragon Lady, Dragon Lady, Dragon Lady!” – never was – well, never was unsubstantiated.

19 years later, in N3 – I mean, I am so high up on my wave that I can see clearly that the lurking, nearly forgotten phantom of Lostine as a dragon lady must re-appear. How can N3’s narrator’s love for Lostine survive such doubt?

My 1980s windsurf board - my Shuler - is over nine feet long. It wasn’t designed for big waves. If I wipe out now, my giant board will find me in the frothing tumble. If I wipe out now, the Shuler’s deep skeg will find me and carve my scalp.

Nothing quite like fear to motivate.