Musings & Thoughts for Monday, February 26, 2024, or: Weekend Update, Part the Second…and Starting a New Writer’s Workweek

Late Morning, Monday, February 26, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi, there, folks, and welcome to the 1,444^th post in A Certain Point of View, Too. It is a cloudy, chilly late winter day here in northern New England. Currently, the temperature is 32°F (0°C) under – naturally – cloudy skies. With the wind blowing at 3 MPH (5 Km/H) and humidity at 56%, the feels-like temperature is 43°F (5°C) Today’s forecast calls for partly sunny skies and a high of 50°F (10°C). Tonight, we can expect mostly clear skies and a low of 19°F (-7°C).

Weekend Update, Part the Second

True to my word, I did not work on Reunion: Coda yesterday, even though my first novel, its story, and its characters are never far from my mind. I want to “get ‘er done,” sure, and I want to read it as a finished, published (well, self-published) book between two covers like everyone else, but I am also not as young as I used to be, so I’m trying to follow Stephen King’s advice from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and only working on the manuscript during the regular workweek (i.e., Monday through Friday).

That’s not to say that I didn’t do anything even remotely related to Reunion: Coda. As I reported yesterday, I need at least one book about how to write romantic scenes, even though the scene I am writing now (Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios) doesn’t involve overt romantic material. So, between 2 and 4 PM, I browsed Amazon’s Books department (in the Romance Fiction Writing Reference section) and, after wading through a sea of how-to titles about writing romance/sex scenes, I chose How to Write a Romance: Or, How to Write Witty Dialogue, Smoldering Love Scenes, and Happily Ever Afters (Illustrated Edition) from The Editors of Avon Books (Morrow Gift, 2019).

Fresh from the desks of the Editors of Avon—the industry’s premiere romance publisher—How to Write a Romance is a playful and inspirational guide through the world of writing romance. Inside, aspiring writers will find prompts on a variety of topics, from plot to dialogue to character development, as well as wisdom from beloved Avon authors on their craft, making this journal the ideal writer’s companion whether you’re on your first or final draft. –  Back cover blurb, How to Write a Romance: Or, How to Write Witty Dialogue, Smoldering Love Scenes, and Happily Ever Afters

Other titles look promising, and if I need another one to answer questions that the Editors of Avon Books don’t address in their journal by the time I reach the scene that I need to study for, I’ll get it. It – probably – won’t be necessary, but it’s always good to have a Plan B in these situations.

Aside from that bit of business, I didn’t do much yesterday. I followed much of my usual “I’m Not Working on the Novel” weekend routine, although it was so cold – for my taste, anyway – that I delayed my daily egress from the relative comfort of the house to the cold outdoors till 3:00 PM. It was, naturally, quite chilly even though the sun was still out, so I only ventured to the front porch, snapped a couple of photos, got a few minutes’ worth of sun, then ducked back into the house.

I then listened to music on my Amazon Music app, watched a few videos on YouTube, played Sid Meier’s Civilization IV for about 20 minutes, then puttered about on Facebook and Twitter (X) until I got bored, then logged off around 8 PM to make a quick dinner and watch something in my room.

On Writing & Storytelling: Action This Day

I am at my happiest – not necessarily “my best,” mind you – when I’m coming up with new material and (hopefully) moving the story forward to a satisfactory ending.

Alex Diaz-Granados, on writing and the creative process

Well, today is Monday, the start of a new workweek, so you know that I’ll be following my regular “business week routine” of blogging in the morning, resting for several hours at midday, and then working on the manuscript – hopefully adding fresh copy to Reunion: Coda instead of making more edits and revisions. As someone with some understanding of the craft, I appreciate the importance of editing and revising – as fellow blogger and writer Molly Shea says, the editing process is where the real magic of storytelling occurs, after all – and I devote much time and energy to making sure that the story is as well-written as I can make it.

That being said, I am at my happiest – not necessarily “my best,” mind you – when I’m coming up with new material and (hopefully) moving the story forward to a satisfactory ending. As I said before, I want to read the completed story – as a reader, not its author – in its final, self-published form, so, of course, I prefer writing new pages rather than going back to fix stuff (typos, inconsistencies in the narrative, or errors in the geography or the real-life events that are sometimes mentioned in the novel, which is, by its nature, a “period piece” twice over). Plus, I’ve been working on Reunion: Coda for almost a year…and the Big Move North from Florida threw a wrench into my scheme to release the novel before Christmas 2023.

As it stands, Reunion: Coda is not only the literary project that I’ve worked on the most, but it’s also the longest. According to Microsoft Word, the manuscript is 186 pages long – including the title page – and contains 77,592 words. Those figures represent a lot of hard work and investment in time, money, and emotional involvement, and even though I’m not overly concerned about how long the book ends up being or how “impressive” the wordcount is, those two details do trigger thoughts along the lines of I hope all of this hard work doesn’t go to waste and that people will like the book enough to read it and maybe recommend it to friends and family.

Anyway, yeah…you folks reading this know how I will be spending this last Monday of February 2024. Wish me luck – I need all the good fortune I can get!