Late Morning, Wednesday, February 7, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire
Hi, folks. It’s almost 10:15 AM EST here in Madison as I begin this, the 1,424th entry in this blog. The current temperature is 32°F (0°C) under sunny conditions. With humidity at 57% and the wind blowing from the north at 1 MPH (1 Km/H), the heat index is 50°F (10°C). Today’s forecast calls for partly sunny skies and a high of 39°F (4°C). Tonight, we can expect partly cloudy skies and a low of 17°F (-9°C).
On Writing & Storytelling: Adventures in Revising & Editing
Yesterday I devoted much of my scheduled writing time to making some revisions and minor edits to Chapter 12 (The Big Smoke and the Big Apple: An Epistolary Chapter of Love & Music – March 2000). I was still tired from Monday’s mental exertions; writing Boy of Harvard and a rough draft of the scene for which my parody of Men of Harlech was intended took a lot of time and effort. I didn’t want to take yesterday off – I truly want to publish Reunion: Coda this year – so I put aside writing Scene Five of the current chapter (Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios) momentarily and did some touchup work on “The One with the Emails.”
Now, some of the revisions were corrections of “bloopers” I caught on my own by listening to selected passages using Word’s Read Aloud feature – you can find it in the app’s Review section, next to the Proofing section where you usually tap on Spelling and Grammar – or were highlighted by the spellcheck function.
However, the most important “fixes” were prompted by suggestions from my friend and fellow writer, Denise Longrie. She volunteered to be my Beta Reader, and as my second set of eyes and writing advisor, Denise has helped me make Reunion: Coda a better novel than I could have written on my own. Every so often, I’ll upload the rough, unedited (or sometimes even lightly edited) draft of one or two chapters from my .docx file for Reunion: Coda to Google Drive. There, Denise reads the fresh – or semi-fresh – copy, evaluates it, and highlights passages with issues – ranging from simple typos to possible SNAFUs with plot, dialogue, or character development. Unless I ask her, Denise doesn’t edit what she reads, although she sometimes makes helpful suggestions in the document’s “Comments” section.
Although as the author of Reunion: Coda I sometimes disagree with Denise, for the most part, I accept her constructive criticisms – I mean, what’s the point of asking someone to be a Beta Reader or seeking helpful advice if you’re going to ignore the critiques and recommendations? – and make the recommended revisions and edits. I trust Denise because she’s been writing poetry and fiction longer than I have, and she’s both talented and sincere in her desire to help. So if Reunion: Coda is any good when I release it “into the wild,” my Beta Reader helped it get that way.
I spent about an hour re-reading “The One About the Emails,” mostly to make sure there were no typos or grammatical errors that Word spell check and I might have missed, then went to Google Drive, opened the Reunion: Coda for Editing file, scrolled down to the last section that Denise and I had discussed on Monday, then applied the fixes she had suggested to the manuscript file on Word.
Action This Day
Wednesdays are, of course, working days for me, so I will follow my usual Novel Writer’s routine of blogging in the morning, taking a two-hour break to rest and have lunch, and then working on Reunion: Coda for three to four hours before calling it a day.
Aside from that, I don’t have much in the way of news to share. I’m expecting a package from Amazon with an AITEE DVD/CD Storage Box 2 Packs, Acrylic Storage Container that I need to store some of my Blu-rays in until all my media towers are assembled. I need to reorganize the DVDs and Blu-rays that have been unpacked to recreate the setup I had in my last Florida home; right now those are all mixed with no rhyme or reason, and I need to separate DVDs from Blu-rays, and 4K UHD Blu-rays from “regular” Blu-rays. The moving box I managed to wrangle on my own from the garage – a one-time experience, I assure you! – takes up way too much room on the floor of my office, and it’s also unsightly so that AITEE storage box is going to be handy, believe me.
Amazon doesn’t deliver packages here the way it does in large urban areas, so UPS and FedEx handle the “last miles” jobs. I just checked my order’s status: Amazon says the package with my new media storage containers is “Out for Delivery.” I don’t know the schedule for the UPS driver assigned to the Madison/Edelweiss area, so I might get my package as early as 3 PM or as late as 7:30 PM.
Thankfully, it’s not snowing today, so hopefully, the UPS driver will leave the package on the front porch rather than out by Huttwill Drive.
Okay…it’s almost time for my lunch break, so I’ll close this post here. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, stay warm, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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