On Writing & Storytelling: My Action Plan for Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Late Morning, Tuesday, July 25, 2023, Lithia, Florida

Hey, there, Dear Reader.

This being summer, and this being west central Florida in summer, it’s shaping up to be another sweltering day in the Tampa Bay area. As I start writing this, the temperature outside is 86°F/30°C under sunny skies. Thanks to a combination of a merciless sun, a slow, almost motionless 1 MPH/2 KMH breeze from the north-northeast, and humidity at 69%, the heat index is 93°F/34°C. Needless to say, since the forecast calls for mostly sunny skies, a high of 94°F/34°C, with only a 4% chance of rain and, of course, a heat index in the low 100s/high 30s.

Action This Day

It’s Tuesday. It’s the workweek. So, for me, it’s a workday, and I’ll be busy with Scene Two from Chapter 10 of Reunion: Coda after my mandatory rest break.

Today’s writing plan is dirt-simple: Continue where I left off on Movie Magic Screenwriter 6.0 and keep on writing the scene in screenplay format just to get the “lines” of spoken dialogue down. If I “finish” the draft at a reasonable time – by which I mean “before 5 or 6 PM today” – I can then begin the more laborious step of rewriting the “screenplay” bits in the same style as the novel.

Frankly, I wish I had been able to just write this particular scene the same way I’ve written the rest of Reunion: Coda, but it seems I got stuck in a depressive cycle re the eighth anniversary of Mom’s death, my regrets about my half-sister and her mental health issues, plus worries galore about my future. It’s incredibly difficult to be creative when you’re distracted by your own emotions, especially if they’re negative ones.

So, as the saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures, and since I want to get that scene done sooner rather than later, I looked for a workaround – and found it in the notion of writing the crucial Jim-Maddie conversation in a barebones screenplay format.

I estimate that I have already written either a third or half of the conversation – which is hard to do cos it’s a phone call rather than a face-to-face chat – so if I have a good writing day I should finish this version of the scene today.

Well, my scheduled rest break is about to begin, so I’ll close for now. I don’t know if I’ll take one hour or two off, but certainly not longer than two hours. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.