It’s midmorning in Lithia, Florida, on Monday, June 5, 2023. As I write this, it’s relatively cool outside (69°F/20°C) under clear skies. Since its now early summer and Day 5 of the Atlantic hurricane season, it’s going to be warmer and stickier later; the forecast calls for partly sunny skies and a high of 86°F/30°C, with Florida’s well-known high levels of humidity. If I can get motivated, I might go out for a quick walk after breakfast. It should still be cool enough to be out and about for at least 20 minutes, and maybe I’ll be back with a “can-do” attitude about today’s novel-writing activities.
Weekend Update
If you read yesterday’s post, Musings & Thoughts for Sunday, June 4, 2023, or: To Write or Not to Write (on the Novel), you might be wondering what – besides getting rid of my mustache – I decided to do in the late afternoon and early evening hours on my day off.
Well, even though I seriously considered doing some work on the manuscript – like writing an alternative version of the “Somewhere”-centric scene that doesn’t use the lyrics by Stephen Sondheim – I decided to not do it. I was, you recall, too tired to write anything more complicated than a blog post or tweets on Twitter. Writing, when I’m tired, is usually not a good idea; the ideas simply don’t come as easily as they should, and – in my experience, anyway – that’s when I make the most mistakes, ranging from typos all the way to dicey storytelling choices that then require extra work in the “Edit and Revise” phase of the process. Plus, writing when you’re not in the mood just isn’t fun. It feels more like something you’re obligated to do for a client – something I’ve done quite a few times – or for a school assignment you’re not really keen on. It’s not impossible to do, but it’s unpleasant.
Instead, I watched Roland Emmerich’s 2019 Midway, a so-so retelling of the 1942 naval battle in which the U.S. Navy defeated a Japanese fleet by sinking all four carriers of the Kido Butai, the main striking force of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s Combined Fleet, as well as one Mogami-class heavy cruiser and 248 aircraft, at a cost of one carrier (USS Yorktown) a destroyer (USS Hammann) and 150 aircraft.
I actually saw Midway at a local theater when it was released in November of 2019; it was somewhat better than the eponymous 1976 film directed by Jack Smight, which I also saw in theaters when I was 13 years old. I give the writer (Wes Tooke) props for trying to be more historically accurate and not adding fictitious characters or non-related subplots, but it still has issues that bug me.
I chose to watch Midway partly because I wasn’t in the mood for fantasy or basic action-adventure fare, but mostly because June 4 is the anniversary of the first – and most decisive – day of the Battle of Midway. I don’t remember if I decided to pick it intentionally in the same way that I used to watch either The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan on the anniversary of D-Day (which, by the way, is tomorrow) or just to give Midway a re-evaluation. It doesn’t matter. I watched it while I ate my dinner and wasn’t bored. (I was still annoyed by some of the storytelling techniques and historical goofs, but I knew they were there already.)
I don’t want to spend too much time discussing Midway, other than to say it is decent enough to watch while you’re eating pizza and not expecting an Academy Award-worthy cinematic experience. If you are at all inclined to see what I like – and what I don’t – about the 2019 Midway, you can read the review here.
Action This Day
It’s Monday, which means it’s a writing day for me. I did get a bit more rest last night than I did the previous night, so even though I woke up early (at 5:30) this morning, I’m not as tired as I was yesterday.
My plan for today includes:
- Looking over some of the earlier chapters in the manuscript and making a few revisions here and there to save time later
- Check my email account to see if Concord Music will give me permission to use the lyrics from “Somewhere” – and if they do, how much will they charge for said permission
- Rewrite the “Somewhere” scene to omit the lyrics in case the fee Concord Music charges is too expensive. If I was certain that Reunion: Coda would sell several thousand copies (especially in the paperback edition), I’d go ahead and keep the version I have now and somehow pay the fee. Based on my experience with Reunion, though, I doubt that I’ll sell enough copies to compensate me for shelling out X dollars for the right to quote a verse from a song
- If the revisions don’t take up too much of my time and energy, I might then go ahead and write new material to finish Chapter Nine
Aside from that, that’s it. That’s my agenda for the day. And on this note, I’ll close this post here. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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