Musings & Thoughts for Tuesday, October 31, 2023, or: Ramblings of a Sleep-Deprived Novelist

Late Morning/Midday, Tuesday, October 31, 2023, Lithia, Florida

Hi, everyone. I hope you are having/have had a good day on this, the last day of October 2023 and, in the U.S. and other countries, Halloween.

Here, it is a pleasant autumn-in-the-subtropics day; as I write this, the temperature outside is 80°F/27°C under sunny conditions, but this being Florida, it feels like 89°F/32°C. It’s almost as though summer were trying to come back, zombie-like, on the eve of both a new month and the passing of a cold front.

Venturing Out…Even Though I’m Sleepy

I have been going out for walks over the past few days – I believe I resumed my late afternoon strolls on Saturday…or was it Friday? Sleep deprivation plays havoc with my perception of time – because late October and early November are when the temperatures outside start becoming more comfortable, at least for me.

Unfortunately, since I have not gone for walks on a regular basis since the spring, my leg muscles tend to tire easily, and I don’t venture out either too far or too long. So, my walks here are far briefer than, say, the ones I used to take in my former ‘hood in South Florida.

I will venture forth for a short walk to the nearby park during the mandatory midday break – even if it’s a bit hotter than I’d like – but I won’t tarry for a long time. I didn’t sleep well last night (constant insomnia is a sign of depression), so even if I wanted to be outside long enough to read one chapter from a book, I wouldn’t have the stamina.

And, as if that bout of insomnia weren’t enough, today is a working day for me, and since I must make progress with my novel, Reunion: Coda, I need to at least try and write at least 200-500 words on the rough draft file on Word. Thus, I not only need to take a shower, get dressed into street clothes, and really rest, but also I must stop dwelling on the reasons why I am so sleep-deprived as of late.

On Writing & Storytelling

Yesterday was a “meh” day as far as working on Reunion: Coda went. My plan for the day was to continue working on the epistolary 12^th chapter by writing another exchange of emails between my narrator/protagonist, Prof. James Garraty, and his new sweetheart, Madison, aka “Maddie.” In the March 2000 part of the story, Jim and Maddie are separated by 3,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean because she’s on a work-related trip in London and he’s teaching history at Columbia University in the Big Apple. They have promised to keep in touch via email while she’s gone; Scene One of Chapter 12 consists of the first batch of messages they exchanged on Saturday, March 4, 2000.

My problem yesterday was that even though I slept well on the night of October 29/30, I was still tired from the night-long insomnia that plagued me on Friday night/Saturday morning. Not so much physically as mentally, but tired is tired. I’m 60, not 20, so I don’t bounce back from a sleepless night as easily as I used to when I was in college. And writing well becomes harder, not easier, as we age.

So, it would not surprise you to learn that my best-laid plans to do the epistolary “thing” went astray, and no emails were exchanged between my “I-Guy” Jim and his new love, Maddie.

I did, however, come up with a way to fill in a plot hole concerning the only minor character who might be considered a “heavy” in the entire duology – my I-Guy’s high school era rival for the affection of 1980s Jim’s crush, Martina Elizabeth Reynaud, aka Marty. The football player – Kenny Garcia – is mentioned in Reunion: A Story and makes a few in-person appearances in Reunion: Coda, but because I’m trying to tell a story that’s set part in the 1980s and part in 2000, Kenny is a potential threat to Jim’s physical well-being in one chapter, then…he and Marty are suddenly no longer an item, and the reader is left to wonder what happened to the guy.

I didn’t want to retrace my steps to the beginning of the 1981-82 school year and not only have Kenny and Jim have a fistfight where one or both of the boys get hurt, but also spend a lot of time on the dissolution of Kenny’s relationship with Marty. I did want to show, in a realistic way, why Kenny vanishes from the narrative. So, I came up with a brief epistolary scene that explains what the hell happened to Kenny and why Marty was, in theory, available for Jim, if only he bothered to ask.

Well, folks, it’s well past noon now – a quick typist, I am not – and I must post this on A Certain Point of View, Too so I can get on with the rest of my day. So…as I always say, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.