Musings & Thoughts for Saturday, June 24, 2023, or: Weekend Update, Part the First*

* Also counts as an entry in the On Writing & Storytelling category, with the headline A Writer’s Weekend Dilemma

Hi, there, and welcome to yet another Weekend Update, Part the First blog post here at A Certain Point of View. It’s early afternoon on Saturday, June 24, 2023, in Lithia, Florida. It’s a steamy early summer day in the Tampa Bay area; the current temperature is 88°F/31°C, although, with the sluggish breeze and 66% humidity, the heat index is 100°F/38°C. Of course, this being Florida, and this being summer, it will be hotter (92°F/33°C) by midafternoon. It’s too hot outside for me to even consider going out to commute with my Muse – Calliope – and get some exercise.

As you know, yesterday was not a productive workday; I only managed to write one post for this blog, and even though I intended to work on Reunion: Coda, I didn’t add any words to the manuscript. I wanted to, but every time I sat at my desk to write, I ended up just wanting to listen to songs like “All the Things You Are” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” (both composed, incidentally, by Jerome Kern) or instrumental works along the lines of John Williams’ “Overture from The Cowboys” and “Love Theme from Superman.”

I wasn’t happy about that, and I promised myself that if I produced an innovative idea for the manuscript, be it a revision of existing material or new stuff for Chapter 10, I’d work on Reunion: Coda today. It is, of course, Saturday, the first day of a weekend, and one of my two non-writing (except of course, for this blog) days.

I don’t have to, mind you. I don’t have a contract with, say, Random House Penguin and an editor impatiently awaiting “new pages” for the manuscript; the only person pushing me to work – especially since I have been single for the better part of three years – is me.  No one here is either cheering me on to “write faster so we can all see the finished novel sooner” or pointing a gun at my head with an ominous call to “write the damn book – or else!”

And honestly, I should, by all rights, be resting and having some fun. And, who knows? Maybe I will still do that.

But…I do have a glimmer of an idea – for a revision and not a scene in Chapter 10 – that occurred to me late last night just as I was falling asleep. And – uncharacteristically – that glimmer (or seed, if you like) of an idea is still planted in my brain. I know what part of the story I’m going to revise, who the players are, and (more or less) how it will turn out.

I also know because it’s a revision and not “fresh material,”  that it’s both going to save me some time in the Revisions & Edits phase of producing the novel and, perversely, delay the forward momentum toward the rest of Chapter 10 and, eventually, the end of Reunion: Coda.

So, yep. I’m torn between heeding Stephen King’s advice – given in his excellent On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft – to take time away from the writing desk for R&R on weekends or answering the siren call of the manuscript.

Ugh. Decisions, decisions.