On Writing & Storytelling: Time for Another SITREP on The New Story

Hi, there, Dear Reader, and welcome to the Thursday, May 25, 2023, edition of A Certain Point of View, Too. It’s midafternoon here in Lithia, Florida, and it’s hot (84°F/29°C), dark, and rainy. It’s so dark that I just had to turn on the ceiling lamp, and I hear thunder, which of course means we don’t just have garden-variety showers in the area. So, since I have an aversion to using electronics when thunderstorms are nearby, this post will be short.

I worked on The New Story for more than six hours today. I didn’t write any new scenes; I wanted to, but since one of the issues that I had with Reunion was rushing to self-publish it in July of 2018 without seriously reviewing it for inconsistencies, plot holes, or even such impossibilities as being able to get a panoramic view of midtown Manhattan from a third-floor apartment in that section of the Big Apple. That’s why I revised Reunion in early March; my former journalism adviser from Miami-Dade College emailed me and pointed out that the book was good but could be improved if I did A, B, and C – which I promptly did. It took me a few days to make the necessary changes, but I made them because the advice was given with only my best interest in mind. (If you’re reading this, T, thanks!)

Anyway, since I don’t want history to repeat itself with The New Story, this time I am doing everything possible to make sure the manuscript is as good as it can possibly be before I go to my Kindle Create app and begin the sometimes-tricky self-publishing process.

For instance, I asked a friend (who is a writer and poet) to serve as a second set of eyes to catch mistakes or suggest better ways to write stuff, whether that “stuff” is dialogue, character and place description, and other story-related details. I’ve done that this time around, thankfully, and I’m deeply grateful to the person who agreed to be my beta reader.

Another thing I am doing is taking at least one or two days (out of five working days) to edit and revise. Ideally, I should just plow through the first draft from start to finish and then focus on reading, evaluating, editing, and rewriting. I don’t have the patience to do it this way – impatience has always been the chink in my armor, at least as far as writing is concerned – so I am alternating between bursts of creating new scenes (sans outlines) and then revising them before going on to write new ones.

Whether this strategy will work or not I have no idea. I guess we’ll just have to see how things develop between now and the day I can write “The End” on the manuscript’s last page.

As of today, I’ve written eight and two-thirds chapters, and the word count currently stands as, per Word, 35,705. At 86 pages, this is the longest manuscript I have ever written, and – since the story is not finished – it’s probably going to be at least 150-200 pages long.

And…as is often the case when I write a blog post, I type so slowly that an hour has passed since I started this one, and now the sun is out in full force…and no more thunderstorm activity!

Well, I don’t have anything else to report, so I’ll take my leave of you now. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll see you on the sunny side of things.