On Writing & Storytelling: The Ups and Downs of My Writing Life

Late Morning, Friday, August 25, 2023, Lithia, Florida

Hey, everyone! Here I am again on yet another hot, humid late summer day in the Tampa Bay area, getting ready to begin another workday before what promises to be yet another “meh” weekend.

As I begin my 1,239^th post on this blog, the temperature outside Is 85°F/29°C under sunny conditions. With humidity at 60% and a northeasterly wind blowing at 7 MPH/12 KMH, the heat index (or “feels-like factor”) is 89°F/31°C. Today’s forecast calls for continued sunny skies, a high of 95°F/35°F, with a 1% chance of rain.

Since today is the 31^st anniversary of “the day after Andrew’s landfall,” I think we’re lucky that none of the named storms churning out at sea on this 25^th day of August are heading this way. So unless a tropical storm somehow materializes out in the Gulf of Mexico and makes a beeline to the Tampa-St. Petersburg Metro Area, we won’t see a repeat of that late August nightmare from 1992.

I still remember how hot it was in Miami during the weeks (two, I believe it was) that Mom and I were without electricity in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. Back then the Internet wasn’t a thing for most people, so I did not suffer “disconnection anxiety” like I did after Hurricane Wilma in 2005 (we were without power for a month then!), but we had no air conditioning, no electric stove, and only battery-operated radios, lamps, and a small battery-powered black-and-white TV to stave off boredom and keep informed. (We could, of course, read during the day, and we got our daily copy of The Miami Herald, so we coped through the dreary and hot days relatively well.)

On Writing & Storytelling

Since Friday is the last day of the workweek, I plan to spend most of my afternoon working on Reunion: Coda. I’m a writer, after all, a professional writer at that, and since I want to publish my first novel this year (late autumn at the earliest, but before the holidays seems more realistic), I must work on it. I mean, that’s what writers do.

Yesterday’s writing did not go well at all despite my best intentions. I did everything possible to prepare well for the workday: I took my required rest break, ate lunch, and did all I could to get physically and mentally ready to write for four or five hours.

However, two factors prevented me from achieving my writing goal.

On the writing front, I could not decide whether to make Scene Three of Chapter 11 a “Jim and Marty” scene set on Wednesday, March 16, 1983, during a practice session for their duet, or do a time jump to the next day and introduce Mr. Abner, the replacement teacher for Mrs. Quincy’s chorus classes. Either choice would have moved the story to where it is supposed to be going, but I couldn’t make a clear decision, so…here we are today, facing the same choice.

Another factor that caused me to “freeze” creatively was my state of body and mind. I felt excessively tired, just as I sometimes did when I was in college, and spent long hours both in the classroom and in the Student Publications office at what was then Miami-Dade Community College’s South Campus. I later found out that I tend to have low blood pressure, and although that is better than having (like my mom did) hypertension, one symptom is tiredness. That leads to poor concentration and decreased productivity. My primary care physician in Miami, the now retired Gilberto Capiro, MD, recommended that I have one can of Coca-Cola a day, preferably in the afternoon, to counteract this. And since the mid-2000s, I have always tried to follow this medical advice.

Alas, yesterday there wasn’t any Coke at hand, but now there are some. In the past, when Coca-Cola isn’t available, I’ve tried to brew coffee as a substitute, but all that does is make me sleepier. Oof.

Additionally, I might have to work tomorrow on the manuscript, even if it’s just for an hour or two, to make up for yesterday’s lost productivity. I do need the time off, but since my days off are…meh ones, I usually choose to write to stave off boredom anyway.

The Upside of It All

If there is one good thing about being a professional writer is that persistence and hard work do pay off, and sales do go up, even if they do so modestly and not, say, in the proportions of traditionally published authors such as Stephen King, Nicholas Sparks, Danielle Steel, Mark Greaney, or even dead writers like Ernest Hemingway or Tom Clancy.

I don’t check on how well Reunion: A Story is selling every day; my Amazon Bestseller’s ranking is not terribly impressive – it tends to hover down in the low millions (usually 1 million or less, which is not all that good, considering that you want to see lower numbers across the board…the smaller the number in the ranking, the higher your sales are.

This morning, though, I checked on Reunion’s current standings on Amazon and saw that it had jumped from 1 million something to the 600,000’s in Books, 6,000’s in Coming-of-Age Fiction, and in the 200,000’s in the Romance (Books) category.

Further digging in my Kindle Direct Publishing account revealed that three paperback copies were ordered yesterday in the United States, bringing my estimated royalties to $22.74 for the month.

This might not be “impressive” to the folks who cling to the notion that I am somehow not a “real” writer – an insulting notion that really means I’m not a successful writer, at least not in their small-minded definition of “success.” But since having two books available for sale on Amazon and earning royalties on one of them do count in my favor, that totally makes that opinion invalid.

(If any of my Constant Readers were one of the three individuals who bought a copy of Reunion, thank you so much! I appreciate your faith in me as a writer and your kind support. If you have not yet bought either the paperback or the Kindle edition, please consider doing so. Every little bit helps!)

In Closing….

Well, my rest break time draws nigh, so I’ll close for now. I really want – and need –  to get some work done today; I am less than 1,400 words away from the 50K-word mark (a record for a single writing project of mine), plus…I hope to publish Reunion: Coda before the winter holidays. Thus, every day of writing counts.

So until next time, folks, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.