Musings & Thoughts for Wednesday, May 31, 2023: Adieu, Spring – And a Writer’s Anxieties Come to the Fore

Adieu to Spring 2023

“Is it so small a thing

To have enjoy’d the sun,

To have liv’d light in the spring,

To have lov’d, to have thought, to have done;

To have advanc’d true friends, and beat down baffling foes…?” ― Matthew Arnold, Empedocles On Etna and Other Poems

It’s late morning here in Lithia, Florida, on Wednesday, May 31, 2023. It’s warm (79°F/26°C) under mostly sunny conditions on this, the last day of May and the last day of spring.[1] Tomorrow, a new month – June – will begin, as will the Atlantic hurricane season. Over the next three weeks, the days will be longer, nights will be shorter, rain and thunderstorms will be more frequent, and the temperatures will be hotter. Then, after the solstice, the days will start getting shorter, but the heat, humidity, and stormy weather will linger till October. Such is the cycle of life in subtropical Florida.

Today’s blog post will, by necessity, deal with only a few topics. I don’t have a lot of news to share, other than that last night I tried to watch Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country with one of the two audio commentaries on – and fell asleep well before the USS Enterprise-A leaves Spacedock on its final mission before her valiant crew – led by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) – retires from Starfleet and the legendary starship (the second NCC-1701 to bear the name) is mothballed. I guess I should have started watching the movie at a more realistic time than 11 PM, but my intention was to go to sleep a bit later than usual so I could sleep until 8 AM. Nope. I fell asleep before Brock Peters’ Admiral Cartwright outs himself as a conservative anti-Klingon bigot during a classified briefing where Kirk and his senior officers (minus Sulu, who is now a captain and in command of the USS Excelsior) are given their final assignment in deep space.

Well, I did wake up early yesterday, and like I said, I picked a shitty time to start watching the movie, so…

And, of course, I did not wake up at 8 AM; I’ve been up since 6:30 AM, had breakfast around 8, and only now (it’s almost 11 AM) am I even capable of writing this blog post.

In other news:

• I still have not heard from Concord Music, the entity that deals with copyright and permissions to use lyrics from West Side Story, regarding my query about my use of the lyrics from “Somewhere”
• I hope to make considerable progress with that scene in Chapter Nine, even though I already know I will be starting to work on it later than I’d like
• I will go to Movie Magic Screenwriter and write the scene in question in screenplay format first, then rewrite it in “novelized” form. Either that, or I’ll just go to my “scratch pad” file and continue to write the scene from where I left off yesterday afternoon. We’ll see

I fervently hope I felt better about this project and, more importantly, about life in general. While I am proud of myself for having written – per WriteItNow’s stats – 142 pages’ worth of manuscript (my longest work to date), I have mixed feelings about The New Story.

“Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Spoiler Alert

The book basically makes the point that it is better to be sorry for sins of commission, rather than regret sins of omission, yet it also shows how the angst of high school and teen fears get in the way of true love. One point I would make – I would LOVE to see a sequel to this, written from Marty’s point of view. PLEASE?

meg learner, in her review of “reunion” on Amazon.co.uk

On the one hand, this is a tale that some of my readers asked me to write, starting in 1999 when I first shared the original rough draft of Reunion to April, one of my early online loves (the “one who got away” after Halloween of 2000) via email. I still remember that April not only liked it, but she even wrote something like, “You need to follow up this story somehow.”

Since I deleted everything related to April from my computer between 2000 and 2001 – things ended on a sour note between us before we even met in person – I don’t remember my exact reply, but I think I said I’d think about it, but that the way I saw it, it might be best if I moved on from Reunion and its characters. After all, not every story ever written has either a sequel or a happy ending. And of course, since my love life has not had happy endings, ever, I never felt tempted to write a follow up to Reunion.

Well, after trying to write a historical novel set during the Normandy invasion in the summer of 1944, and especially after revising my novella, Reunion: A Story, the notion of doing a continuation suddenly seemed like a logical “next step” – and one that at least one reviewer on Amazon seemed to want:

A lovely lyrical book and excellently written. It makes use of flashbacks, yet these are expertly woven into the story so that you always know where you are and how they contribute to the tale. This is quite a short read (I downloaded it to my Kindle and read it on my train journey) but it certainly packs a lot into the story and the idea is fresh and novel. I have not read a story like this before. It’s not my normal type of reading material, as most of my reading these days is factual or business-related but I really enjoyed it and was sorry when it was finished.

The book basically makes the point that it is better to be sorry for sins of commission, rather than regret sins of omission, yet it also shows how the angst of high school and teen fears get in the way of true love. One point I would make – I would LOVE to see a sequel to this, written from Marty’s point of view. PLEASE? – Meg Learner, in her review on Amazon.co.uk

It looks like at least a few fans will get their wish, although I couldn’t really write The New Story (I still have not given it a definitive title) from a woman’s perspective, as Ms. Learner suggested. This is still Jim Garraty’s story. But Marty (Martina Elizabeth Reynaud), Mark Prieto, Mrs. Quincy, and a cast of new characters will be in this, my first attempt at a novel.

But….

On the other hand, I sometimes feel as though I’m only writing stories for myself and maybe 20-30 other readers, mostly because I am going the self-publishing route and therefore must also act as my own publicist (which I don’t like) and marketing director (which I truly don’t like). And because I don’t have much support from my relatives (Mom died in 2015, I’m estranged from my half-sister, and most of my surviving cousins live in Colombia, where Amazon doesn’t have much of a presence), I don’t know if too many folks will buy the book once I finish it and publish it via CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing.

I’m still committed to writing The New Story; I’m already – per WriteItNow, 142 pages, per Word, 86-89 pages, depending on which file’s stats I’m looking at – nine chapters in, and if I do my job right, I only have a few more to go. I want to see how this story ends, and as any honest writer will tell you, this novel is just as much for me as it is for the wider audience out there.

I’m not writing this project to become famous or rich, although it would be nice to earn a living from writing and not be on a fixed income forever. As Stephen King writes in his wonderful book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft:

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”

Still, I would like the new book to sell well. I don’t think that’s too much to hope for – or is it?

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[1] I measure the seasons in meteorological terms instead of the traditional “astronomical” ones. For folks who hold on to the old ways, summer won’t really start until the summer solstice, which falls on June 21. And in American culture, summer began on Monday and will end on Labor Day.

As to what constitutes “meteorological summer” and why I prefer the meteorological calendar to the traditional one, I’ll let Calendarpedia explain the concept:

Meteorological summer

Meteorologists, on the other hand, define seasons based on climatic conditions and the annual temperature cycle. It is important for them to be able to compare the same period of time in different years. The length of the astronomical seasons varies between 89 and 93 days, while the length of the meteorological seasons is less variable and is fixed at 90 days for winter in a non-leap year (91 days in a leap year), 92 days for spring and summer, and 91 days for autumn. While the exact definition of a season’s timing and length can differ in different areas based on local conditions, in most of the Northern Hemisphere meteorological summer is generally defined as the three months of June, July and August, with the season starting on June 1 and ending on August 31.

There is no “official rule” which definition of summer to use, and different countries adhere to different conventions. Most of North America and Europe use astronomical summer, while Australia and New Zealand use meteorological summer (however, as these countries are in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are opposed and summer there lasts from December to February). In other cultures, eg. in the traditional Chinese calendar and in Celtic traditions, the June solstice is considered to be roughly the middle of summer. In the United States, with regard to cultural events, the summer season is often considered to begin on Memorial Day (last Monday of May) and end on Labor Day (first Monday of September), thus coinciding more with the meteorological definition of summer.