Musings & Thoughts for Friday, February 9, 2024, or: Adventures in Editing and Revising

Late Morning, Friday, February 9, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi, there.

Well, it’s a chilly and somewhat gray New England morning on this last day of the regular workweek. Currently, the temperature is 36°F (2°C) under cloudy conditions. With humidity at 73% and the wind barely blowing at 1 MPH (1 Km/H), it feels like 50°F (10°C). The forecast for today calls for partly sunny skies and a high of 44°F (7°C). Tonight, we can expect partly cloudy skies and a low of 25°F (-4°C).

I don’t know at what time I went to sleep last night, but I woke up a bit later than usual – it was 7:10 AM Eastern when I wandered into the kitchen to check the time on the microwave clock. I’ve already had breakfast and even ventured outside – much earlier than usual – to explore my neighborhood a bit more and take a few snapshots with my phone’s camera.

On Writing & Storytelling: Adventures in Revising & Editing

I spent most of yesterday going over Reunion: Coda’s manuscript to fix issues with the novel’s 13^th chapter – Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios, aka “The One About Jim’s High School Graduation” or “The One About Commencement” – and look at earlier chapters to do little “touchups” or add missing Information to make sure the story is consistent and there are as few “plot holes” as possible.

I planned to start this task, which can often be time-consuming and frustrating, between 1 and 2 PM, but because I had an earlier than usual lunch, I sat down at my desk – forgetting to go out for the midday constitutional – shortly before 1…and didn’t stop working – except for a dinner break around 7 PM or so –  until way past 8 PM.

As I said earlier, I concentrated primarily on Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios, paying particular attention to the “problem areas” that my Beta Reader Denise Longrie had highlighted in the “copy for editing” of Reunion: Coda over on Google Drive. Most of her suggestions centered on simple – and common – writer’s “bloopers” such as typos, missing words, and other errors that Word’s spellcheck function often fails to catch. Those were easy to fix, so I didn’t spend too much time doing basic copy editing.

However, several issues required more time and effort to correct, such as unnecessary repetitive passages, or sections of scenes that relied too much on description and could have been better told through the characters’ dialogue more than with narration only.

Here’s an example of a passage that was improved by adding dialogue:

Mom turned off the engine and we sat in the car (Mom in the driver’s seat, Mark and me in the back), feeling the heat seep through the windows. The radio was playing WTMI, Mom’s favorite classical music station. A friendly voice interrupted the music to give us the weather update.

“Good afternoon, listeners. This is Ken Martin, your classical music DJ. It’s a hot one today, folks. The temperature in Miami is currently 95 degrees Fahrenheit, but with the humidity, it feels more like 110. I don’t know about you, but I think Bob Weaver got it wrong again. He said it would be a pleasant day, but it’s more like a furnace. Stay cool and hydrated and avoid direct sunlight if you can. And now, back to our musical program…”

I snorted and shook my head. Ken Martin was right. Bob Weaver was a decent TV weatherman, but sometimes he got the weather wrong. He had predicted a mild and sunny day, but it was more like a sauna. We were about to graduate, but we felt like we were melting.

 I also went back to an earlier chapter that’s also set during Jim Garraty’s high school years and added a small but crucial passage that introduced information that is relevant to Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios. I spent about an hour writing an “article” – 300 words, in a style appropriate for a high school student newspaper – related to a key story point that I would otherwise have had to explain in a longer – and thus time-consuming – scene. I think, overall, that the faux news story for The Serpent’s Tale was a good workaround.

(I worked on The Serpent’s Tale in 10^th and 12^th grade, first as a staff writer, then as Entertainment Editor. So I’m familiar with the tone and style of that publication, especially in its 1980s incarnation.)

I won’t bore you with a long, detailed list of all the revisions I made yesterday. Suffice it to say that I did my best to improve Reunion: Coda so that when I publish it later this year, readers will get a novel worth buying…and reading.

Well, it’s time for my midday break, so I’m going to wrap up this post and try to figure out what to have for lunch. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.