Musings & Thoughts for Saturday, June 10, 2023, or: Weekend Update – Part the First*

* Alternate Title:  On Writing & Storytelling: Man, I Really Need a Day (or Two) Off!

“Every person needs to take one day away.  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.  Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.  Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.” ― Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s early afternoon here in Lithia, Florida, on Saturday, June 10, 2023. It’s a hot (87°F/30°C) early summer day in the Tampa Bay area – and it’s going to be hotter still: the forecast high will be 92°F/33°C, and the humidity will make it feel hotter than that. Ah, well. It’s the subtropical zone, after all – and at least there are no thunderstorms in the forecast, so that’s a plus.

I was going to work on my novel today, but I’m too tired. Apparently, I fell asleep early (I estimate it was around 10:30 PM) while I was watching Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country on my 4K UHD set. I managed to turn off the TV and 4K UHD Blu-ray player before I fell asleep, but no sooner did I place the remote on my writing desk than I went out like a light.

The downside to going to bed – involuntarily, mind you; I wanted to watch the last movie starring the original Star Trek cast, especially since the 4K UHD presents Nicholas Meyer’s 1991 end-of-the-Cold War allegory in its theatrical edition and not the slightly longer “Home Video Edition” with extra footage not seen in theaters – is that I woke up extremely early.

How early, you ask?

2:30 AM.

Now, I’m not going to say I’ve been up and about since 2:30 AM. I did watch most of Star Trek VI (with the volume turned down as low as possible so I wouldn’t wake up anyone else) till I got drowsy again (which must have been around 4 AM). Again, I managed to turn off the TV with the remote – but sleep refused to come easily, and I lay on my futon, watching as the light levels in my room slowly but surely increased.

I did manage to doze off at some point, but I still woke up at 7:30 AM, feeling groggy and headachy.

I have been doing some self-assigned chores, such as hanging up my freshly laundered clothes and doing other things to help around the house, but I don’t think I’ll be able to work on Reunion: Coda today. I wasn’t supposed to, anyway; it’s Saturday, and I usually try to not work on weekends. But since yesterday was not a productive day, I thought I’d make up for the lost day by at least getting Chapter Ten started.

Well, that’s not happening. Not unless I feel energized and refreshed after I take a shower and put on clean clothes, anyway. But based on how I feel now, I think it’s better if I rest today and tomorrow.

“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Look. I love writing. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was 11 or 12 years old. And according to my late mom, it’s what I was meant to do. On good days, when I get my 1,000 words a day in and the stuff I write looks halfway decent, writing makes me happy. And sometimes – not often enough, I must confess – I think I’m good at it. Not great, mind you, but at least I know what I’m doing…most of the time, anyway.

That having been said, today is not going to be one of those “Oh, look! Everything is coming together just great!” days. I’m fuzzy-brained; I’m not even sure if all this work will be worth it; and I’m disappointed that the process for getting permission to use song lyrics in a novel is both complicated and expensive.

I’m also telling myself the story as I write it; there’s no outline or blueprint – the only guideline I have for this project is “Make it consistent with what came before in Reunion: A Story” – so in my head I’m saying, “Okay, so Marty agrees to sing a duet with Jim at their last Spring Concert as high school seniors…. How much of their time together do I show? They obviously can’t spend too much time in each other’s company because Marty will then realize Jim loves her – unless she’s as dumb as a rock, which she is definitely not! And, of course, since Reunion already tells us about what happens to the South Miami High choral groups before the concert, what happens in Reunion: Coda cannot retcon that.” So, working on this story is weird for me; I – and those who have read Reunion – know how the Jim and Marty part of the narrative has to end. And yet, getting to that particular destination is still a challenge.

There’s also the issue of how to continue the other interwoven plot (the Jim and Maddie story) that’s the flip side of the story. So far, it looks reasonably good, but I have been focusing so much on the 1983 parts of the novel that the Present Day (2000) bits will be hard to get back to either in Chapter Ten or Eleven.

If I weren’t so tired, I could at least come up with a plan for What Comes Next when I resume work on Reunion: Coda on Monday. Or, even better – from my perspective, anyway – I could even start Chapter Ten today…once I decided if it was going to be a “1983” or “2000” story.

But…

I am tired, stressed, and not at my best now. If I try to write anything more complicated than this blog post, it’s quite likely that it will come out – shitty.

So, I’ll just take Stephen King’s advice from his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and take some time to relax, recharge my batteries – so to speak – and wait until Monday to resume work on the novel.

And, on this note, I’ll close for now. I still have clothes to hang in my closet, anyway, so I’ll go deal with that chore before weariness – and laziness – set in.

“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.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft