On Writing & Storytelling: The Chapter with the Emails Moves Forward…One Romantic Email at a Time

Late Morning, Thursday, January 18, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi, there, folks.

It’s almost 9 AM Eastern Standard Time as I begin my 1,401^st post on A Certain Point of View, Too. Once again, it’s been one of those long mornings when I wake up much earlier than I need to, can’t get back to sleep, then wait till a decent time – in my case, 7:30 AM – 8 AM – to go to the kitchen and make myself a modest breakfast without worrying about waking up Stuart, the other guy who rents a room in the house. (Not that I make a hell of a lot of noise in the first place, but after nearly seven years of living in a house where my bedroom/writing room was adjacent to two other occupied bedrooms, being quiet/considerate to others has become a habit.)

Although the snow has, for the time being, stopped, it’s still quite chilly outside here in my corner of New England. As I write this, the temperature is 14°F/-10°C under partly sunny skies, with a “feels like” temperature of 16°F/-9°C. The forecast for Madison and the vicinity calls for partly sunny skies and a high of 28°F/-2°C. Tonight, skies will be mostly clear, but the low will be – at least for this Florida exile – a bone-chilling 3°F/-16°C.

On Writing & Storytelling: Moving the Epistolary Chapter Forward – One Email at a Time

Although I did not achieve my goal of writing two simulated emails for Chapter 12 of Reunion: Coda, aka the “Epistolary Chapter,” aka “The One with the Emails,”  yesterday was still a productive day on the writing front. It took me longer than I liked to get my thoughts together and write Maddie’s reply to Jim’s email with the poem he wrote for her – I wanted to start writing around 1 PM so I could write two emails rather than just one; I got my shit together sometime after 2:30 PM  and wrote with nary a pause until 4:17 PM to produce this:

(Since this is a relatively spoiler-free email, I shall share it here. Consider this, if you will, a preview of what you can expect when the novel is published sometime this year.)

I have no words to express how beautiful the poem you wrote for me is. I’ve read it over and over several times since I opened your last email, and the only thing I can think to say is, Ton poème…c’est si beau pour moi. Je l’aime, et je t’aime. Merci chérie du fond du cœur.

Oh, I just thought of a better expression: Je te remercie, mon amour, de tout mon être.

I don’t care if you’re not Shakespeare, Keats, Éluard, or Baudelaire. You are a wonderful writer, and even though your focus is military history, you have the mind of a scholar and the heart of a poet. That poem is beautiful, darling. Thank you.

Maddie to Jim, in Reunion: Coda

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: New Topic – Your Big Day (and Other Matters):

My dearest Jim,

I have no words to express how beautiful the poem you wrote for me is. I’ve read it over and over several times since I opened your last email, and the only thing I can think to say is, Ton poème…c’est si beau pour moi. Je l’aime, et je t’aime. Merci chérie du fond du cœur.

Oh, I just thought of a better expression: Je te remercie, mon amour, de tout mon être.

I don’t care if you’re not Shakespeare, Keats, Éluard, or Baudelaire. You are a wonderful writer, and even though your focus is military history, you have the mind of a scholar and the heart of a poet. That poem is beautiful, darling. Thank you.

Moving on…

Today’s recording session at Abbey Road was, as you might imagine, long, tiring, but ultimately rewarding. Maestro Masur and our executive producer, Heinz, seemed happy with the sound engineers’ report about yesterday’s taping, so we’ve moved on from “Forgotten Dreams”  to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21.

I won’t bore you with all of the details, Jim, about the session. I’m a bit cross with myself for bodging the arpeggio in Piano Concerto 21 the first time we played it, but I shrugged it off and focused on getting it right on the next take. Happily, neither Maestro Masur nor Heinz seemed too upset, and the rest of the session was, as the saying goes, a piece of cake. We recorded the “Elvira Madigan” three times today; the powers that be will listen to each performance and then tell the sound mixer and album editor which version should go in the finished album.

If all goes well, Jim, we might even wrap up the project a bit ahead of schedule. Everyone seems to be pleased with the Leroy Anderson tracks – so far, anyway – and if the Mozart ones don’t need to be re-recorded, all that’s left is Rhapsody in Blue, the longest of the three works on the album. Once we do that piece, there’s a good chance that we won’t need to be in London after 9 March.

Now, don’t get your hopes up, Professor Jim. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in life is this: “Expect the unexpected.” (I would have cited Murphy’s Law, but I prefer to be an optimist. At least in this instance.)

Well, dear heart, I got back to my room after dinner in the hotel restaurant with some of my colleagues about 40 minutes ago, and I’m a bit knackered…so much so that I’m going to bed as soon as I shoot this off to you. I hope your day at the Uni was not too dreadful, and that you’ll have the sweetest of dreams tonight. And remember – I love you very much, Jim.

All my love,

Your Maddie

MaddieMusica*97@hotmail.com

Sent: Tuesday, March 7, 2000, 8:50 PM GMT

What you’ve just read is not the original version of the email as of 4:17 PM yesterday. I mean, most of it is, but when I wrote the first draft of Maddie’s email, I got the details of the Abbey Road recording session slightly wrong – a fact I only realized when I went over the “One with the Emails” in its entirety around 7:15 PM and noticed that, to borrow a Britishism from Maddie, I had bodged the order of the musical pieces being recorded for the fictional album in Reunion: Coda.

I don’t want Reunion: Coda to end up having the same issues I had with Reunion: A Story and going through the nerve-racking process of correcting various types of mistakes after the novel is published and available for purchase on Amazon and other booksellers.[1] So, around 8 PM or so – I can’t recall because by then I was tired and grouchy – I checked Maddie’s previous email to Jim about her previous recording session on the album in question and corrected the order of the tracks mentioned in her most recent email.

I am pleased with the transatlantic back-and-forth between Jim – who is busy with his teaching duties at Columbia University back in New York – and concert pianist/love interest Maddie, who is currently in London with her orchestra recording an album titled Mozart, Gershwin, and Anderson: Three Centuries of Music. My friend Juan – one of the two trusted persons that I show the manuscript to – reassures me that Maddie is a vivid, likable, and beautiful character and that the emails between Jim and her show that their relationship is blossoming into a genuine love affair.

What I’m not so thrilled about is that I still haven’t been able to write more than one simulated email per day. Partly because of the cold winter weather – it’s hard to focus on the manuscript when, despite the heater running in the house, I feel the occasional draft of chilly air on my fingers even though I often wear texting gloves that one of my friends from Epinions thoughtfully bought for me. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’ve never been a fan of cold weather, so adapting to life here in New Hampshire has been difficult because of the snow and extremely low temperatures.  

(Other issues, like my not having my New Hampshire state ID yet or having to miss the upcoming primary election are also on my mind, but the biggest factor affecting my writing output is the cold. I’ll get used to it…eventually…but right now it sucks.)

Action This Day

Today being Thursday, it’s a regular workday for me, so after my mandatory rest break – and hopefully, a brief sally forth to the front porch to get some sunlight and fresh air – I will be at my desk, drafting Prof. Jim Garraty’s reply to Maddie’s email.

Again, I hope that I can write two emails (one from Jim, the other from Maddie in response to Jim’s) rather than just one. My motivation is still this: the faster I complete “The One with the Emails,” the quicker I can move on to Chapter 13, even though presently I only have a vague idea of what will happen once the New York Philharmonic, Maddie’s current employer, wraps up recording Mozart, Gershwin, and Anderson: Three Centuries of Music and returns to the States.

My friend Juan and I have talked about how to “up the stakes” in the plot before satisfyingly ending the novel. He and I agreed to add a situation – which I’m not going to divulge here – that will add some dramatic tension to the otherwise sunny scenario in the Jim-and-Maddie bit of the story (remember, Reunion: Coda also delves into Jim’s high school years to flesh out the narrative of Reunion: A Story). I was, and still am, a bit reluctant to add a new, ahem, wrinkle to the plot, but it is necessary – even if it means pushing back the publication schedule a little.

So, yeah, I want to get on with finishing Chapter 12 and moving on the next chapter. But I must do it carefully and not try to rush through it and sacrifice the quality of the writing for the sake of expediency.

That’s all I have to share with you today, so I’ll wrap this post up here and take my leave of you, at least until tomorrow. Take care, and send me all the good wishes you can spare for a good day’s worth of writing. Adios, amigos!

---

[1] I recently discovered that although books published independently through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing are sold primarily through Amazon in all its marketplaces, including Amazon UK, Amazon Spain, Amazon Germany, and even Amazon Japan, they’re also made available to other booksellers that have a partnership with the leading e-retailer, including Barnes & Noble online and New York City’s Book Culture chain. Reunion: A Story, for instance, is listed (at a slightly higher price) on the Book Culture website. Since Kindle Direct Publishing titles are “print on demand,” brick-and-mortar stores will list them as “Out of Stock,” but they’ll order a copy for you…and it usually takes 3-5 business days to fulfill the order.