Musings & Thoughts for Monday, January 29, 2024, or: A Quick Weekend Update, and…It’s Back to Work on Reunion: Coda!

Mid- to Late Morning, Monday, January 29, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Howdy, folks. It’s a chilly, gray-shrouded New England morning in my corner of Madison. The current temperature is 31°F (0°C) under cloudy conditions. With the wind blowing from the north-northeast at 6 MPH (10 KMH), the wind chill is 25°F (-4°C). The forecast for today calls for cloudy skies and a high of 38°F (3°C). Tonight, the skies will continue to be cloudy. The low will be 10°F (-12°C). So, it’ll be cold, especially at night, but…no snow!

Weekend Update, Part the Second

My Sunday was a mostly quiet and restful day. I briefly considered working on Reunion: Coda, but in the end, all I did was open the document file once, look over Friday’s efforts – the start of Chapter 13 (Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios), didn’t see anything amiss, and closed the file. This was around noon, and I was at my desk – on and off – till 10:30 PM, so I think I successfully kept my rest day…restful.

So, if I didn’t work on Reunion: Coda, what did I do yesterday?

Here’s a quick summary of my Sunday is Funday activities:

• Wasted time on the computer (listened to music, checked email, “did” social media, etc.)
• Ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner
• Played two skirmishes in Regiments
• Thought about watching Silver Bullet, but watched World War One instead cos it was almost 11 PM

I also went outside – briefly – for my daily dose of sunshine and fresh air. I didn’t go beyond the front porch and only lingered outdoors for a few minutes. But…I made the effort. That’s what counts, right?

On Writing & Storytelling: Action This Day

Today is a working day for me, so after my rest break, I will resume work on Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios, which is a “Jim in 1983” chapter. Plot-wise, this chapter isn’t hard for me to figure out: I know – more or less – which characters will be featured (besides my protagonist-narrator, of course) and what must happen. (If you’ve read Reunion: A Story, and I hope you have, this part of the novel is predetermined. The only thing that I need to do is “flesh it out” in writing.)

This doesn’t mean, of course, that getting down this last hurrah for the teenaged James Kevin Garraty  from my subconscious to the page will be, as the British say, a “piece of cake.” I’ve begun quite a few of the South Miami High chapters with the naïve notion of, “Oh, this one will be so easy to it, it’ll just write itself in a matter of days,’ only to end up grappling with them, like Ahab hunting Moby-Dick, for weeks and even months.

With that in mind, folks, I’m going to approach Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios with confidence, enthusiasm, and determination – but without any illusion that chronicling Jim’s Commencement Day will be an easy task…either technically or emotionally.

So, if you’re following my writer’s journey and are planning to buy and read Reunion: Coda, wish me luck. I’m definitely going to need it.