Musings & Thoughts for Saturday, January 20, 2024, or: Weekend Update, Part the First – To Write…or Not to Write?

Late Morning/Early Afternoon, Saturday, January 20, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi, everyone. It’s another frigid winter day in my corner of New England. As I begin this, the 1,403^rd post in this WordPress blog, the temperature is 17°F (-8°C) under cloudy skies. The wind chill factor is 23°F (-5°C). Today’s forecast for Carroll County – which includes Edelweiss, the section of Madison I now call home – calls for cloudy skies and a high of 20°F (-7°C) during the day. Tonight, skies will be mostly cloudy; the low will be 5°F (-15°C).

Since I have been up and about since 6:30 AM, I have already had a modest breakfast that consisted of two cups of coffee, two Vitamin D3 gummies, and three slices of Thomas’ Raisin Swirl bread. Not exactly a Grand Slam breakfast from Denny’s, but I must make do with what I have on hand.

Around 8:30 AM, maybe a bit later, I donned my snow boots and winter jacket (I was already dressed in “street clothes” because it’s too cold for Florida-friendly cotton PJs) and put on my Star Wars Film Concert Series baseball cap to go outside for my daily dose of fresh – if chilly – air and sun. There wasn’t much of the latter – the sky was, and still is, covered by a thick veil of gray white clouds. The temperature at the time was 10°F (-12°C), but because the wind was barely blowing, it didn’t feel that cold – and I went out without my heavy winter gloves.

Still, I’ve been sniffling and sneezing a bit since Thursday, and even though I don’t feel like I am coming down with a cold, I played it safe and only walked up – literally – to the driveway, stomped around on the icy ground – carefully, so as not to slip, fall, and break a leg or arm – a bit, and even tried to “write” my initial letters on a slushy bit of snow. That didn’t work…it was like trying to draw an “A” onto a 7-Eleven Slurpee. Having had my three or four minutes of fun in the gray and cold January morning, I walked slowly but steadily back to the house, shook off the snow from my boots on the doormat at the entrance of the house, then quickly ducked inside and closed both of the front doors.

On Writing & Storytelling: The Novel’s ‘Email Romance’ Chapter Moves Along, One Email at a Time

Yesterday was a better-than-average writing day, although I started writing well after 2 PM. I completed an email written by concert pianist Maddie to my “I-Guy,” Jim Garraty (which I’d started writing on Thursday night), then spent the bulk of my afternoon shift drafting Jim’s reply, which I had him write on his laptop from a classroom at Columbia University.

Here’s Maddie’s part of the conversation:

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

My dearest Jim,

It’s 5:35 AM here, and although most of the sky overhead is as dark as it can get in a huge metro area – what with light pollution and all that rot – I can make out a faint pink-gray line on the eastern horizon; rosy-fingered Dawn is waking up, I think. I probably could have slept a few more minutes, but as you know, I must get ready for today’s session at the studio. So…I’m up, sitting on my bed with my trusty laptop, reading your email, and wishing fervently you were on sabbatical so we could be…together.

I can tell, dear heart, that you miss me. Even if you hadn’t said it overtly when you wrote about being “cautiously optimistic” about the possibility of an early end to the recording sessions, I would still have “read between the lines” and sensed your feelings of love and longing for me. Not because I’m some kind of psychic or Jedi Knight, but because I feel the same yearning, the same feeling of being incomplete when I look around in my hotel room or, really, anywhere and I don’t see you there.

I still can’t say for sure how much longer we’ll need to work on this album – which will be released under the title Mozart, Gershwin, and Anderson: Three Centuries of Music sometime in the fall – and none of the bigwigs running this gig have said anything concrete about when we will head back to New York. Everything depends on how today’s session at Abbey Road turns out. If we can perform Rhapsody in Blue well and without needing to do too many takes, we might be able to wrap up this part of the process and leave London sooner rather than later.

If not….well, then our reunion will come in due course. And, I remind you, it’s not like we’re going to be on this side of the Pond for weeks…Worst-case scenario: we would be here two or three days beyond 10 March. At most.

Jim, I was a bit surprised that one of your students, Hernandez-or-Jimenez, was so aggressive and pigheaded about a, as you say, misrepresented historical truth. Unfortunately, there are conspiracy theorists and misguided people who believe the craziest notions everywhere. I’ve seen – and heard – quite a few folks like that here in Britain; I’m sure you’re familiar with David Irving, who started out as a somewhat respectable historian with a slightly pro-German slant in the ‘60s, but became quite controversial when he claimed in his book Hitler’s War that the Holocaust either didn’t happen or that if it did, (a) Adolf Hitler did not order the extermination of Europe’s Jewish population, and (b) the figure of six million murdered Jews was a gross exaggeration. I think Irving’s take on Nazi war crimes and Hitler’s role in the Shoah is bollocks, sheer bollocks. So, unhappily, history deniers, or history distorters, are not just an American problem…they’re a global problem, and they exist on both the left and the right sides of the political spectrum.

And no, I’m not a political science or history minor. My father, though, was in the Foreign Service – his last posting before he retired and entered the business world was the British consulate in Miami, which is why [I was] “Stateside” in the late 1970s with Dad and Mum. He loved Florida so much that when he left government service in 1980, he got a job with the Burger King Corporation in…Coral Gables, was it? I wasn’t into politics or history much as a kid, but I did learn a thing or two through conversations with my father before I returned to London to study music.

Anyway, you were lucky that you were still on campus – and with other people around you – when Miguel confronted you. I hate to think what would have happened if he had accosted you in a less public place. I do think you handled the situation well: you kept your wits about you and didn’t escalate the situation – yet you didn’t back down. Well done, love.

Well, dearest, it seems that rosy-fingered Dawn is now fully awake; there’s already a hint of red-gold light teasing over the eastern horizon. Sunrise is at 6:30, and it’s already 5:55 AM, so I had best get going. I must take a shower – use your imagination if you like, dearest – and get dressed; a group of us musicians are getting together for breakfast at the hotel restaurant at 7 sharp, and then it’s off to Abbey Road for a day’s work on Rhapsody in Blue.

I hope you have a good day, darling. And for God’s sake, don’t get into another argument with that bloke. A punch on the nose can ruin your whole day.

Oh, yes. One more thing. I love you. I can’t wait till our dinner, movie, and wine night!

Love always,

Your Maddie

MaddieMusica*97@hotmail.com

Sent: Wednesday, March 8, 2000, 5:59 AM GMT

As a writer, I have fun when I’m writing a scene with Maddie. She is intelligent, well-educated, sophisticated (yet unpretentious), talented, charming, English, funny, and, of course, beautiful, and sexy. No wonder Jim Garraty, the protagonist/narrator of the Reunion Duology, has fallen for her!

(My friend Juan Carlos Hernandez, who knows a thing or two about storytelling as a performer and filmmaker, reassures me that Maddie is a well-written character and that readers should fall in love with her as much as Jim has.)

I would show you Jim’s response, but I want you to read my novel when it’s published, so you’re just going to have to wonder how he reacts to Maddie’s comments, especially the more flirtatious ones.

Action This Day

I don’t know, to be honest, what I will do after I have lunch today. I usually don’t work on Reunion: Coda on weekends – one of Stephen King’s tips for folks who want to write fiction is to keep a sensible workweek schedule but set aside the weekends and not work on a manuscript. Even though he’s prolific and loves to write, he doesn’t work all day long Mondays through Fridays, and he takes Saturdays and Sundays off to rest, spend time with his family, and enjoy life.

I could, of course, stay away from my desk after I eat whatever it is I decide to make for lunch once I publish this post and not worry about Jim, Marty, Mark, Maddie, and the rest of the characters in the novel till Monday. I do have some of my books, movies/TV shows, and music albums unpacked, so it’s not like I don’t have any other way – besides my computer – to keep me entertained. I can read, watch one of my available Blu-rays or DVDs, or listen to a CD in my bedroom and not stay in my office if that floats my boat.

And if I choose to stay in this room, I can either surf the Internet, waste time on social media or play one of my games on my Steam and GOG.com accounts. Or I can still read a book on Kindle for PC or listen to music on Amazon Music. Heck, I can even watch some of the movies that I still haven’t unpacked because – ta da! – I have digital copies on both Movies Anywhere or Amazon Prime Video…including all 11 Star Wars films. (The Blu-rays for those movies are in the garage…in boxes.)

And yet…since I lost so many writing days between November 17 and early January, I sometimes think that I should do some work on the novel on weekends, even if it’s just doing what I call “smoothing the rough edges” in the manuscript. I didn’t do that with Reunion: A Story (the first book of the duology), which is why I had to revise and edit it so many times between March and December of last year. I promised myself that I’d be more mindful of the importance of edits, rewrites, and revisions with the novel, so….

Anyway, folks, as I type these words on a cold and cheerless-looking day, I still don’t know what I’ll do between 1 and 4:30 PM. But since it’s now past 12:30 PM, I’d best close this post and figure that out. So, bye for now, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.