Musings & Thoughts for Saturday, July 1, 2023, or: Weekend Update, Part the First

“Morning is wonderful. Its only drawback is that it comes at such an inconvenient time of day.” ― Glen Cook, Sweet Silver Blues

Hi, there.

It’s late – almost noon – morning here in Lithia, Florida, on Saturday, July 1, 2023. It’s going to be a scorcher today; as I write this, it’s already 86°F/30°C under mostly sunny conditions. That’s bad enough, but the forecast for this first day of the seventh month calls for a high of 96°F/35°C and sunny skies. (And, as you know, humidity and calm winds add several degrees to the “official” temperature; the current “feels like” temperature is 90°F/32°F.)

Today’s post is going to be short and to the point. First, I woke up at 4 AM and couldn’t fall asleep again, so I’m tired, nursing a headache, and feeling grouchy.[1] As you can imagine, I’m not in the best physical or mental shape to write a long entry, especially on my day off from “writing as my day job.”  I wish I felt better – since I don’t have any plans for the long Fourth of July weekend and no one to hang out with, I’d planned to work on the novel today.

And while we’re on the topic of writing….

On Writing & Storytelling: Writing in Retrograde

Although yesterday was a writer’s workday for me, and I did quite a bit of revising and editing, my efforts were not on Reunion: Coda but on its antecedent, Reunion: A Story.

See, one of the goals I have with the Reunion Duologyis that in addition to publishing Reunion: Coda later this year (late August if I finish the first draft this month, September or early October if I finish the first draft in late July, and do all the revisions in August, and if I am not in the midst of a move to another house then), I also want to produce an excellent “Deluxe Omnibus Edition” with both stories in one volume.

That, of course, requires that the original novella be as good as I can make it, and that it matches the quality of Reunion: Coda’s writing. Keep in mind that I wrote the first draft of the older story in less than a week way back in 1998, and even though I’ve edited it several times since, I still see things in the text that bug me. And if I want to publish an omnibus edition (in hardcover, at that), it’s a good idea to fix things – typos, inconsistencies in the narrative, and minor but vexing grammatical mistakes – now, when I’m still aware of them, rather than later.

So, yes, I went backward rather than forward yesterday, which is why last night I said to myself, “Well, I’m not going out anywhere this weekend (What else is new?), so I might as well make up for lost time and work on the novel tomorrow.”  

Apparently, my Muse, Calliope, does have plans for the holiday weekend, or maybe she wasn’t happy that I decided to mess with Reunion: A Story yet again, cos I woke up way too early – as I said earlier – and it will take a miracle for me to write anything beyond this blog post.

Here’s hoping that tomorrow will be a better day for me. Writing-wise, anyway.

And on this somewhat somber note, I’ll close this post here. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy…and don’t piss off your Muses! 

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[1] I’m irritated not just because I didn’t sleep well, but because Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is out in theaters, and I can’t go see it. It’s West Side Story (2021) again – I want to see it in a theater, but…I have to wait till it is released on home media.