On Writing & Storytelling: Chapter 12 is Done – Now it’s On to the Next Chapter!

Late Morning, Friday, January 26, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” – Hal Borland

Hey, folks. It’s late Friday morning here in Madison. It’s been a chilly, snowy morning; the current temperature is 32°F (0°C) with intermittent snow showers. Right now we’re in a lull, but when I was in the kitchen brewing some Maxwell House Original Blend coffee at 9, the white stuff was falling heavily. Today’s forecast calls for a not-too-pleasant mix of light rain and snow throughout the day. The high will be 35°F (1°C). Tonight, we can expect scattered light rain and snow showers. The low will be 30°F (-1°C)

Well, last night I re-read, edited, and reorganized the last batch of emails in Jim and Maddie’s transatlantic correspondence, and as I leave them waiting for a happy reunion at JFK International Airport, I now must turn my attention to the next chapter of Reunion: Coda.

Action This Day

If you’re a Constant Reader of this blog, you know that Reunion: Coda is structured to tell my narrator/protagonist Jim Garraty’s story by alternating between his “Present Day” (Spring of 2000) romance with concert pianist Madison, aka “Maddie,” and recalling his days as a high school student in early Eighties South Florida, with an emphasis on his friendship with Mark Prieto and his growing attraction to Martina Elizabeth Reynaud, aka “Marty,” a girl he meets when they join South Miami High’s choral department on the same day.

Because the epistolary chapter (“The One with the Emails”) is set in March of 2000, the next one will, more than likely, be the final “Jim in High School” one and will do a time jump to Friday, June 17, 1983, as the events that occur between March of 1983 and Jim’s graduation are covered in the first book of the Duology, Reunion: A Story.  

If Calliope, my Muse, is kind to me today, I should be able to begin work on the thirteenth chapter after my midday break. This part of the novel, like most of the ones set at South Miami High School between January of 1981 and June of 1983, is semiautobiographical because I, like Jim, Mark, and Marty, was a member of the Class of ’83 at that high school, and I can use my memories of Graduation Day to ground this chapter in some kind of authenticity.

I am not sure, though, that I’ll get a lot of writing done even if I return to my desk at 1 PM and start writing immediately after I “wake up” my computer from the Sleep setting. I have been in “March of 2000” mode – with a long interruption forced on me by the Big Move North from Florida – since last October. So, I don’t know how long it will take my little gray cells to shift gears and travel back to 1983 and Jim’s Graduation Day at Miami-Dade Community College, South Campus.

I’m hoping that, at best, I’ll only be “stuck” for – at most – an hour while I figure out how to begin the chapter. Logically, it shouldn’t take longer than that because, as I said earlier, I’ve based most of the South Miami High stuff partially on my own experiences in Cobra Country (especially those that I had when I was a singer in the men’s and mixed chorus ensembles) and can thus draw on my memories of that particular period in my life.

Plus…I have Reunion: A Story and its narrative as another resource, so it’s not like I am an explorer landing on some literary Terra Incognita. I mean, I know what happens to Jim…and Mark…and Marty at this point in the story. I just have to figure out how to pull the Concrete Details – as David Schroeder, my Creative Writing professor at Miami-Dade Community College (now Miami-Dade College), would say – from my subconscious and put them on Microsoft Word.

So…that’s what my Action Plan for this last day of the regular workweek looks like. Let’s see what develops!