On Writing & Storytelling: Thoughts & Musings for (Another) Snow Day in Madison, New Hampshire

Late Morning, Saturday, January 13, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Another Snow Day in New England…

Hello, there, folks.

It’s another wintry day here in New Hampshire. Currently, the temperature is 32°F/0°C under light snow. The feels-like (or if you prefer, wind chill factor) temperature is 25°F/-4°C. According to the Weather app on this PC, we are supposed to experience snowy conditions for the next two hours. Oof.

The forecast for today calls for continued rain and snow for much of the day. The high is expected to reach 40°F/4°C. Tonight, the winter storm affecting this part of the New Hampshire/Maine region will move away from here; skies will be mostly cloudy, and the low will be 29°F/-2°C.

On Writing & Storytelling: An Update on Reunion: Coda

Yesterday was not a particularly productive day on the Writing & Storytelling front. I was not able to start at a decent time; I needed to focus on other matters, including my food situation and trying to not get discouraged by the emotional upsets of the Big Move North. The then-looming winter storm that is bringing the aforementioned rain and snow to Madison weighed heavily on my mind, as was my need for lots of things that are either in the boxes still or that I must order – albeit reluctantly – from Amazon.

If you’re a writer – and I know that many of you who read this are writers, or at least bloggers – you know that stress and worry wreak havoc on the creative process. Well, yesterday I was worried and stressed, so even though I had a good plan in my mind for working on Reunion: Coda, I simply couldn’t focus well enough on the work because I was worried about, you know, other important matters.

So, not only did I not start trying to work on the manuscript at a decent hour (which I define as being between noon and 1 PM Eastern), but I did not write any new material for the epistolary chapter that I so confidently started in October, not long before I decided to take the plunge and move to New Hampshire…in winter.

To be sure, I did work on Reunion: Coda for several hours (between 2 PM and 4:25 PM), but I was forced – by both my emotional state and the late start of the workday – to focus on the less sexy side of the writing process – revising and editing.

(Yes, I know. That less sexy side of writing and storytelling is, in a phrase oft-uttered or written by many of my fellow scribes, “where the magic is really done.”  I know and accept that editing and revising is crucial if one is serious about writing anything intended to be shared with the world. Hell, I even do it when I blog. But it is hard, time-consuming, and often frustrating work, you know?)

Anyway, I ended up tidying up the text in the transatlantic email correspondence between Reunion: Coda’s 2000-era “leads” (Jim and Maddie) and tried to make my leading lady – as I like to call Madison – sound more authentically British without overdoing it. I also made a few seemingly minor corrections to the text so that I don’t have to keep on going back on the Kindle Create app to fix “bloopers” after I publish Reunion: Coda sometime this year.

Action This Day

Since it is both raining and snowing, and the white stuff is covering everything in a white blanket of frozen water crystals (including, unfortunately, the front porch, the driveway, and the roads), I doubt that I will go outside today.  It’s too cold and cloudy to even go out just beyond the front door for a quick dose of sunlight, so I am just going to stay indoors today.

Will I try to work on the novel today to make up for yesterday’s lost productivity? At the very least, I plan to do that – as soon as I figure out what to eat for lunch. After all, we writers can’t focus our attention on the task of writing a scene or coming up with good, even witty dialogue if we are thinking about preparing a meal or figuring out how to ration the food items we have in the fridge and pantry.

The only good thing about the Big Move North – from a first-time novelist’s perspective – is that I was between 60% and 75% to the end of the story when I had to put the project aside on November 17 so I could focus on the packing away of my stuff into moving boxes. If you are a regular reader of A Certain Point of View, Too, you’ll recall that I expected to release Reunion: Coda in time for the Christmas/Hannukah season because I believed I was nearing the “finish line.”

Well, that didn’t happen, so now I’m shooting for a Spring 2024 publication on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. But I’ll only hit that target date if I don’t have a lot of “off days” like yesterday.

So, yep. I plan to work today even though it’s a Saturday.

As soon as I eat something, anyway.

Wish me luck, friends – cos I need it.