On Writing & Storytelling: I’m Working Today, But I’ll Have a Late Start….

Midafternoon, Monday, October 9, 2023, Lithia, Florida

Hi, everyone. I’m still on my midday break, which I’m extending until 4:30 PM while I try to figure out my “game plan” for today. I had one of those long, insomniac nights again, and even though I wanted to sleep a bit longer this morning, I woke up not long after 7:30 AM. So, obviously, I’m not as well-rested as I ought to be, and that puts a crimp on my plans for what should be the first day of my workweek.

I don’t want to take today off because I want to finish Reunion: Coda in time for a December release (probably around December 15-20, which is why I’m already thinking about possible cover designs even though I still have between three and five chapters to write, plus some “front matter” and “back matter” stuff. Every day that I miss work on the novel will, of course, delay the release of the book by 24 hours, and even though the wider world won’t care much about that, I do.

Goldbricking is not an option.

After my break (from writing the novel, anyway) ends, I’ll do some brainstorming about Chapter 12, and perhaps attempt to at least write a few paragraphs just to get Scene One going. If I find that I’m still tired and can’t “write new words” today, I’ll go to my fallback position and work on revising Scene Four from the previous chapter.

As for the rest of the novel….

If you’ve followed my writer’s journey in my quest to write Reunion: Coda, you know – or ought to know, anyway – that I’m a so-called “pantser”, which means I write fiction by the seat of my pants rather than spend a lot of time making an outline and planning every detail way before I start writing anything. I have never liked outlines; I’d rather make the story up as I go, you know? It’s slightly less stressful and far more freeing creatively – for me, anyway.

That doesn’t mean, though, that I don’t think about story structure, narrative unity, coherence, or “what happens next” when I’m writing fiction. For Reunion: Coda, I know how I want the story to end, even though I am still hazy about the specifics of getting my cast of characters to get there from where they are now (per Chapter 10, at any rate).  

I think, based on “the story so far” in the Jim and Maddie section of the novel, that I still have two or three chapters to go before I can type “THE END” and take Reunion: Coda to the pre-publication phase of the process, and – after that – send it to Kindle Direct Publishing. So, considering that we’re already on the second week of October, I can’t have too many delays if I want to publish my first novel in time for the holiday season.