Hi, there, Dear Reader.
It’s late morning in Lithia, Florida, on Friday, June 9, 2023. It’s a warm (80°F/27°C) sunny early summer day, with clear sunny skies and rising temperatures. It’s going to be sunny and hot – the high for today is expected to reach 89°F/31°C, although the heat index (aka “feels-like temperature”) will be in the low 90s/30s.
Well, yesterday was not a productive day as far as the novel is concerned. I opened my “scrap sheet for Reunion: Coda” file on Word, scrolled down to where I left off on Wednesday and tried to figure out how Scene Four, Chapter Nine should begin.
To my frustration, I sat here at my desk, stared at my computer screen, thinking of the various ways that I could approach the scene, which is important because:
- It fleshes out an existing plot point from Reunion: A Story that has an impact on the relationship between Jim Garraty and Martina Elizabeth “Marty” Reynaud
- It sets up one of my favorite scenes from the finale of Reunion, plus it’s also based on one of the saddest moments in my senior year at South Miami High School
[Marty] smiled again. “I see,” she said. “How did you do on your final?”
“Okay, I guess. How about you?”
She shrugged. “All right, I suppose. Biology is not my cup of tea. I’ll be happy if I pass with a 75.”
I essayed a small smile. “I’m sure you did better than that,” I said.
Another shrug. “We’ll see.” She sighed.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?” she asked wistfully.
“What?”
“That this,” she said with a sweeping gesture, “part of our lives is over, Jimmy. Three years sure went fast, didn’t they?”
“Yes – yes, they did,” I said, feeling suddenly as if the stars and the planets had been placed on my shoulders. I felt my smile vanish. I slouched forward and let out a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” she said unexpectedly.
“Huh?”
“That we never got to perform that duet together. Don’t you remember? For the Spring Concert?”
“Oh, yeah. What was that song we were going to sing?” I asked.
She placed her right hand on her hip and mock-pouted at me. “James Garraty, don’t tell me you forgot.”
I gave her an impish Who, me? look. When she smiled, I said in a more serious tone: “‘Somewhere,’ from West Side Story.” I hummed the song’s first measure; it sounded a half-octave off-key.
Diaz-Granados, Alex. Reunion: A Story (pp. 30-31). Kindle Edition.
My dilemma with Scene Four, essentially, boils down not to “What Happens Next?” plot issues. I know – as the author of the original novella that Reunion: Coda is a direct prequel/sequel to – what’s supposed to happen. As I explained yesterday, what happens to the characters in the fictional version of South Miami High’s Room 136 happened in the real South Miami High back in 1983. It’s essentially a roman a clef scene, with only a few embellishments and name changes made for the story.
The problem here is that I can’t make up my mind if I am going to do a time jump (Scenes One through Three are set on January 3, 1983; Scene Four, provisionally, takes place just over three months later, circa March 13. (I’ll have to look at a calendar from the year to make an educated guess about when Ms. Owen, the real-life chorus teacher on whom Mrs. Quincy is based, bade goodbye to us in her third-period Mixed Chorus class.)
Anyway, that was my Big Writer’s Headache yesterday afternoon, a literary Gordian knot, if you will. And it’s going to be my Big Writer’s Headache today, as well. I could not undo the knot yesterday; as a result, I did not write any new words – at all. (I did make a few minor edits, so it’s not like I got nothing done. Still, yesterday was definitely not a good day on the storytelling front.
Let’s hope that today will be different.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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