Stuck on a Ship

This post is quite unexpected in that it was never meant to be blogged about. For my second post, I wanted to put up a story I have been working on for the past week. But it turns out that I have lost my way again, though not as badly. For starters, I can just tell you that this story is set to take place on a sea vessel and I have already placed my protagonist on the ship's deck.

Now the trouble is that I have little knowledge of layouts of huge ships, and I need to form some accurate blueprints in my head to move myself around, along with my protagonist. Dear ol' Google has been of some help and I am more familiar with certain terms, practices and ships now than before. But it has been frustrating work so far, and I still have not acquired some knowledge that I desperately seek. Perhaps I am not searching for the right terms as I am not well-versed in sailor lore.

This search and seek practice of the past few days has opened my eyes to a new kind of irony: my dependence on facts and research to form the support columns of my imagination. Imagination is supposed to be an all-powerful weapon that can define new frontiers. However, it is something that can neither exist nor develop on its own.

For a powerful imagination, one must be open-minded and absorb the lessons of their surroundings. Even for an imaginary setting where the imaginaut has defined surroundings completely other-worldly and alien to what is known to us, they form roots out of what they gained from their own experiences on the real earth. Wonka's great glass elevator may not have the same characteristics as our normal elevators, yet it was imagined from the foundation of a normal elevator of which the esteemed imaginaut Roald Dahl was aware of. Tolkien was a skillful linguist and used that knowledge to create languages to support Middle-Earth. He also used his appreciation for the wide-open spaces in England, where he lived, to gain inspiration to conjure the Shire.

Right now, I may have the imaginary power and the inspiration to write my story but I lack the knowledge to do so. I can still define the boundaries of my own ship, the like of which has never been made before, but I believe that will not connect my audience too well with the setting. The artificial layout will need to be polished and waxed too well, and the depth of characters will need to be quite intense to delusion the reader into believing that those walls can really exist. After all, Khaled Hosseini re-imagined a true Afghanistan that gave him the power to connect well with his readers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle placed Detective Holmes in London so well that his statue actually graces Baker Street today. And I have simply not reached that level of experience as an imaginaut yet.

So I am afraid that unless I find some true knowledge about sea travel which I need, I cannot proceed with my sea tale. It's not that difficult, but will need some time and more effort on my part. I think I need to go to the Karachi Port and have a tour of a huge cargo ship myself. And if any of you are guessing as to what the story is about, well, it's not that hard to guess and the theme may be predictable but not in the way you imagine it. For now, I shall leave my protagonist to stand at the ship's deck on their own until I can create the world for him to move about in.