On Writing & Storytelling: Pressing Forward with the Novel as I Head into the ‘Home Stretch’

Late Morning/Midday, Saturday, January 27, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi, there, folks. It’s just past 10:20 AM EST as I begin my 1,411^th post for A Certain Point of View, Too. The current temperature is 35°F (2°C) under cloudy skies. With humidity at 82% and the wind blowing from the northeast at 1 MPH/2 KMH, the feels-like temperature is 43°F (6°C). Today’s forecast calls for cloudy skies and a high of 39°F (4°C). Tonight, skies will be mostly cloudy, and the low will be 26°F (-3°C).  Best of all, there’s no snow expected!

On Writing & Storytelling: Starting Work on the Next Chapter

Now that I have finished Chapter 12 – the epistolary chapter that I often refer to, Friends-style, as “The One with the Emails” – and put it behind me (till I give the manuscript another editorial pass), I am moving on to Chapter 13, which should be the last of the “Jim in high school” interludes.

I wasn’t going to begin working on that part of Reunion: Coda until Monday, but I’ve edited and revised most of Jim and Maddie’s electronic correspondence in Chapter 12 so many times that I decided to at least write a “placeholder” start for the first scene in Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios, which is the chapter title I chose for teenaged Jim’s last appearance in the story.  

I didn’t set out to write my usual goal of 1,000 words or create a definitive opening to this particular section of the book; I just wanted to set down – on Word – a beginning that echoes (but doesn’t mimic) a similar scene in Reunion: A Story’s Journey’s End: Wednesday, June 15, 1983 chapter. (I don’t like using numbered chapters, in case you haven’t noticed.) 

Why write a callback to the first book in the Reunion Duology series? Well, this chapter is set two days after the main events described in Reunion: A Story, which takes place mostly during Jim Garraty’s last day of classes at South Miami High School in June of 1983. Now it’s the morning of Friday, June 17, 1983, Commencement Day for South Miami’s Class of 1983 (which, by the way, was the class I graduated with 41 years ago this June), and my narrator/protagonist is waking up – unwillingly and unnecessarily – at his usual time of 5:30 AM.

Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios: Commencement Day, Friday, June 17, 1983

1

5:30 AM

The cube-shaped silver-gray Sony Dream Machine alarm clock with blue LED digits pierced my eardrums with its shrill wail, snapping me out of a fitful slumber filled with nightmares. I groaned and slapped the SLEEP button, wishing I could stay in bed for another hour. Or better yet forever. I muttered to myself, “Why do I have to get up so early?” It was not like it was a normal day or anything. However, nothing was normal about this day. It was the end of an era, the closing of a chapter, the final goodbye to a place that had been my second home for three years. South Miami Senior High School, where I had met the girl of my dreams, and let her slip away after waiting for too long to tell her how I felt. The school year had officially ended two days ago, but today was the day that would haunt me for the rest of my life. The day that I would see Marty for the last time and watch her walk away with her family.

That is, of course, if I saw Marty at all. Like all the other high schools in the Dade County Public Schools system, South Miami Senior High School’s graduating classes were too large to accommodate students, faculty, administrators, and, of course, friends and family members of the grads within the school itself. The only space on campus where all 535 of us seniors had ever been assembled as a group was the school gym/basketball court, but even that cavernous space was too tiny to hold the crowd of 3,000 that was expected to attend the Class of 1983’s commencement ceremony. As a result, my fellow grads and our guests who had tickets had to go to the Theodore R. Gibson Center at Miami-Dade Community College’s South Campus instead.

There’s a bit more than this excerpt; by the time I ceased working on Reunion: Coda for the day, I produced 627 words, just over half of my daily target of 1,000 words – which I deliberately ignored because I’m still a bit mentally tired after the long, protracted, and sometimes vexing process of writing “The One with the Emails.”  

For a rough draft, the partial scene that I wrote yesterday isn’t too bad, and I briefly considered writing a little more over the weekend. Partly to make up for the time I lost to the Big Move North between November 17 and early January, but mostly to keep my mind off the depression I feel at times about leaving Florida and the challenges of settling here in Madison. As my late 10^th grade English teacher, Tara Brock, used to tell us early in the morning in our classroom in South Miami High, “A busy child is a happy child.”

Will I work on Reunion: Coda today, Dear Readers? I don’t think so. My mind is too unsettled by the effects of the weather on such mundane things as a UPS delivery (snowy weather and UPS deliveries do not mix well) and trying to “accentuate the positives” of the Big Move North.

Also, I will be going to Market Basket to do some food shopping. That probably won’t take too long, but I know my moods and rhythms, and I just can’t imagine coming home to work on a novel on Saturday, which is usually not a working day for me anyway.

So, on that note, I’ll close here. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.