Life in the key of E flat minor

In my quest to be correct, I wasn’t. Willem Janszoon made the first European contact with Australia in 1606 and not Dirk Hartog in 1616. At the end of 1605, Willem sailed from Java in the Duyfken to the coast of western New Guinea, then headed south crossing the Arafura Sea. He entered the Gulf of Carpentaria and, most historians believe that he made a landfall at the Pennefather River on the western shore of Cape York in Queensland during the early part of 1606. The route Janszoon took lead him to believe that this land was a southerly extension of New Guinea. He and his crew landed there, but found the land swampy and the people inhospitable. Willem Janszoon returned to Java in June 1606 after naming his discovery "Nieu Zelandt". The name was not adopted for that area, but it was used later by Abel Tasman to name New Zealand. Those Dutch were all over the place, too.

The key to being a writer is writing. It’s a very simple concept but one that I’ve drifted away from. So I’m working on free writing for 12 minutes a day. It can be a summary of the day, a journal entry, a conversation with myself or Molly Bloom-inspired stream of conscience. I never realized how difficult free writing is. Making yourself write for a discrete amount of time without stopping is tough: your hand cramps, you think faster than you write, you want to correct and you shouldn’t. My biggest issue is that I want to be correct when I write. Last night I wanted to write about Australia but I got too caught up in trying to iron out details about Dirk Hartog , his Hartog Plate and the date that he landed in Shark Bay . (Dirk Hartog was a Dutch explorer who is accredited with being the first European contact with Australia in 1616. He left a pewter plate commemorating his visit on an island in Shark Bay in Western Australia.) So, I walked away from the computer and took out the not...

While English history is very interesting to me, I perfer the history of her colonies. I am a big fan of The Other Boleyn Girl -- it's a must read -- and I love Jonathan Rhys Meyers since Bend it like Beckham . It's the Evanescence song, Lacrymosa, in this trailer for the Tudors that I'm constantly listening to. I love the use of Mozart's music in the song. It reminds me of my days in high school when I was focused on Requiem masses. So, maybe I'll catch the show.