Spring break, with pirates

I spent the week on vacation with my family. We drove to Denver to stay with my wife's sister and enjoy the tourist attractions. Among those was the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, where they had a special touring exhibit, Real Pirates! The exhibit was wonderful, and inspiring for my current writing project.

The exhibit featured artifacts from the Whydah, a slave galley turned pirate ship by "Black Sam" Bellamy in the golden age of piracy. The ship wrecked off the coast of Cape Cod in 1717 during a storm. Barry Clifford located the wreck in the 80s, and it's now touring the nation in various museums. The exhibit displays the usual stuff -- cannonballs, parts of muskets, various tools and utensils, and an impressive display of real pirate treasure in the form of hundreds (thousands?) of silver coins. It also had many interesting insights into the make-up of pirate crews (including many black and Native American sailors, their mentality about going "on the account" (a.k.a. signing on to be a pirate), their almost dandy style, and the cultural mess of the triangular slave trade.

I tried to sketch down some notes about it all, but managed to lose the notes on my smart phone. Still, it was inspiring stuff, and I managed to write down much in my journal later on.

Canada and I decided to cut our trip a bit short and drive back home late Thursday night. She asked about my note taking and what I was up to with this writing thing. I explained it all to her, my idea for a fantastical novel of sky pirates. She knew I had been up to something, and I think is more than a little pleased I'm finally getting around to that writing thing she's always wanted me to do. She has no idea how I needed to get all that out from the echoes of my head.

I spent a lot of time this weekend doing more research and sketching out more ideas, names, second-world geography. Oh, true, it's not the first time I've dived into a creative project like this, and often those ideas sit idle, or used in ways other than fiction writing. But, I have an inkling -- only that so far -- that I'm finally getting myself into a strange routine to see this through.