Musings & Thoughts for Monday, September 18, 2023: Weekend Wrap-Up, and Resuming My Writer’s Journey

Late Morning, Monday, September 18, 2023, Lithia, Florida

Hi, there, folks.

It’s the beginning of the third workweek in September 2023, and even though we are 18 days into meteorological fall (and five days away from traditional or astronomical fall), it still feels like summer in the Tampa Bay area. Right now (9 AM) the temperature outside is 81°F/27°C under mostly sunny skies. With humidity at a sticky 84% and a northerly wind barely blowing at 4 MPH/6 KMH, the feels-like factor is 88°F/31°C.

Of course, it’s only late morning now and it’s bound to get hotter as the day progresses; the forecast calls for partly sunny skies and a high of 92°F/33°C. The only good thing about the weather picture here in Florida is that there’s only one named storm – Hurricane Nigel, now a Category 1 cyclone – out in the Atlantic, and it’s not coming our way.

Weekend Update, Part the Second

Since yesterday was the 79^th anniversary of the start of Operation Market-Garden, I watched director Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far, a 1977 adaptation of the book by Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day). Produced by Joseph E. Levine for a then impressive $25 million and featuring an international all-star cast that includes Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Sean Connery, Elliott Gould, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Kruger, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, Maximillian Schell, and Liv Ullmann, A Bridge Too Far uses the same semi-documentary approach to Market-Garden – the ill-fated Allied attempt to capture a bridgehead over the Rhine River to end the European part of World War II by Christmas 1944 – used by Darryl F. Zanuck in 1962’s The Longest Day.

A Bridge Too Far is one of the better epic war films ever made, but because it was produced and released shortly after the Vietnam War ended, it was not commercially successful in the U.S., where war movies had lost much of their appeal to moviegoers, at least for the short term.  (A Bridge Too Far performed better in Great Britain and the Netherlands; for the British and Dutch, the Battle of Arnhem holds greater significance than it does to Americans, even though two-thirds of the airborne contingent were U.S. divisions.)   

As I wrote in my June 29, 2020 review:

At nearly three hours in length, A Bridge Too Far is longer than the average feature film. However, it is tightly written, well-paced, and is riveting enough so that it doesn’t drag or seem boring. Attenborough has good directorial instincts and as an actor himself, he had a good rapport with the cast. (The only exception, sadly, was with Dirk Bogarde, whose overconfident and even arrogant portrayal of Market-Garden’s overall commander was criticized by friends and relatives of the real “Boy” Browning. The flak Bogarde received from those critics caused a rift between Attenborough and himself.)  It’s a movie worth watching, even though it is about a battle that could not be won.

Aside from watching the movie in the early afternoon hours, I didn’t change my weekend routine much. I read for a while, listened to classical music on my Amazon Music app, and, still in a martial mood, played several variations on the Bischofroda skirmish in Regiments. After dinner, I tried watching an episode of the second season of Star Trek: Picard, but I turned it off less than a third of the way through it because I was – mercifully – getting drowsy.

Action This Day

Today is, of course, a working day for me, so the only item on my agenda is “Work on the manuscript for Reunion: Coda.” I am, per Microsoft Word, on page 118 of the first draft of my novel, just 585 words shy of the 50,000-word mark. Thus, the plan for today is:

• Take a rest break after publishing this post on A Certain Point of View, Too
• Resume working on the manuscript, focusing on writing new material rather than editing/revising existing text

I still feel disappointed that I did not work on the novel over the weekend; I am a bit behind my self-imposed schedule for self-publishing Reunion: Coda. When I began this project – which was not something I planned to do until I began revising my novella shortly after my 60th birthday – six months ago, I thought I’d finish the first draft by July and publish the edited and revised version by…September!

Alas, it now looks like the earliest estimated date of publication will be late November or early December, and that’s assuming that I finish the first draft by October 15 – less than one month from today. I was too optimistic back in March when I thought I’d be releasing Reunion: Coda this month; I didn’t foresee being sidetracked by having so many quality control issues with the multiple revised editions of Reunion: A Story. Nor did I consider the debilitating effects of self-doubts and depression on my ability to concentrate and write creatively five days a week for months on end. And, of course, I’m not a fast typist; I’m not so slow that an ambitious snail could complete a novel before me, but I’m also not as fast a keyboard jockey as Clark Kent in Superman.

(“Lois, Clark Kent may seem like just a mild-mannered reporter, but listen, not only does he know how to treat his editor-in-chief with the proper respect, not only does he have a snappy, punchy prose style, but he is, in my forty years in this business, the fastest typist I’ve ever seen” – Perry White, Superman: The Movie)

Well, I need to go take my rest break soon, so I’ll wrap this post up here. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll see you on the sunny side of things.