On Writing & Storytelling: A Quick SITREP on ‘Reunion: Coda’ and the Effects of Bad Weather on My Output

Late Afternoon, Monday, July 17, 2023, Lithia, Florida

It Was a Dark and Stormy…Afternoon

Hi, all. I’m back for a quick update on my writing experience on this hot, rainy, and even stormy first day of the workweek.

First off, as I predicted, the “scattered rain showers” did pop up around noon today – as soon as I hit the Publish button for Musings & Thoughts for Monday, July 17, 2023, or: Wrapping Up the Weekend Update While Prepping for the Writing Workday, actually.

And, as I feared, we didn’t just get run-of-the-mill scattered showers that dumped a little rain and moved on with the prevailing wind – we got thunderstorms. The clouds and storm cells come and go, so it’s not like it’s an “all-afternoon with storms” situation, but it did delay quite a few things, including my writing-for-work start time. From the looks – and sounds – of things now, a new round of rain and lightning strikes is heading our way from the west, which is why this post is a “quick update.”

Did I manage to work on Reunion: Coda at all today? Happily, yes, I did, although the stormy weather in the area forced me to amend my plan from “add new stuff to Chapter 10” to “revise and edit stuff on previous chapters.”  

This wasn’t what I wanted to happen, but since my choices boiled down to (a) risking the “fried by lightning” death of my PC by staying online during a thunderstorm while writing new material, or (b) editing and revising existing material now, even if it means postponing forward movement with the novel’s plot, I had to be pragmatic and choose the option I liked the least but still allows me to say “I worked on Reunion: Coda today, at least for a while.”

At least my conscience is clear. I worked on my manuscript. I found some things that needed to be fixed, and I fixed them.

Carefully Watched Packages

While I worked on making corrections on Reunion: Coda, Amazon delivered my copy of the July 8 third revised paperback edition of Reunion: A Story. I knew it was the version I wanted when I took the book out of the shipping envelope it had arrived in and looked at the reverse cover. The plot summary blurb was fixed, and the most glaring bloopers in the text are now gone.

The text is still not 100% perfect, but whatever imperfections remain are minor. I know what they are and where they are, so once I finish the rough draft of Reunion: Coda, I’ll go back to Reunion: A Story and fix them before I create the omnibus hardcover edition sometime in 2024. Right now, though, I’m not inclined to go through the process of uploading another batch of corrections to KDP/Amazon.

Anyway, I’m awfully tired and not exactly in the best of moods. It’s the weather, mostly, but the Dreaded Anniversary of Mom’s death is less than two days away. Eight years have not assuaged the pain and sorrow of that event, you know?

Oh, well. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better, more productive day.