Musings & Thoughts for Thursday, February 29, 2024, or: A Leap Day Report on My Journey as a First Time Novelist

Mid- to Late Morning, Thursday, February 29, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi there, friends. It’s a beautiful, if perhaps chilly New England morning on this last day of (Leap Year) February 2024. Currently, the temperature is 19°F (-7°C) under sunny skies. With humidity at 40% and the wind blowing from the west-northwest at 9 MPH (15 Km/H), the wind chill factor is 14°F (-10°C). Today’s forecast calls for mostly sunny skies and a high of 28°F (-2°C). Tonight, the skies will be clear. The low will be 10°F (-12°C).

Closely Watched Packages, Part 1

My package from Amazon with my copies of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and How to Write a Romance: Or, How to Write Witty Dialogue, Smoldering Love Scenes, and Happily Ever Afters, along with a three-month supply of Vitamin D gummies, arrived last night around 7 PM. The other guy who lives on the opposite end of the house, Stuart, was kind enough to retrieve it from the front door and place it on the dining room table, even though I’d heard the UPS driver’s footsteps clump-clump-clumping on the wooden steps and was getting up from my office chair to retrieve my package.

The Wells novel replaces a Scholastic Books paperback edition that I’ve owned since at least 1979 and has shed its front cover from too many years of exposure to the Florida sun. Oddly enough, I’ve started reading The War of the Worlds several times since I ordered it, along with the black-and-white paperback edition of Marvel Comics’ adaptation of Star Wars, in my eighth-grade English class at what was then Riviera Junior High, but I’ve never finished it! Mostly because until I started reading alternative history novels such as Alfred Coppel’s The Burning Mountain: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan and The Two Georges by Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfuss, I had a tough time picturing a Martian invasion of Earth in the late Victorian era, but partly because the paperback – or at least its front cover – was falling apart.

Now with this public domain print-on-demand edition, which is in a larger format than my junior high-era copy and comes with the illustrations from the original 1898 edition, I’ll give The War of the Worlds another try.

How to Write a Romance: Or, How to Write Witty Dialogue, Smoldering Love Scenes, and Happily Ever Afters is more of a workbook/source of writing prompts/writing journal/inspirational guide than it is a proper “how-to” book on writing romance novels – which is what Reunion: Coda is, only written by a man from a man’s perspective. Unlike many of the customers who wrote scathing reviews on the book’s Amazon product page, I understood what How to Write a Romance is because I not only read the product description, but also some of the positive reviews that explained the book’s function and style.

I am, of course, not going to write in the book’s blank spaces to follow prompts such as Write a love scene in which both characters keep most of their clothes on, and Describe the heroine’s best friend. Is he or she three-dimensional enough to be the next protagonist in the series? Something worth keeping in mind! First and foremost, my penmanship sucks. Second, even if I had awesome Palmer method cursive skills that would have made my 1970s era teachers weep with joy, there’s not enough space on the pages for me to write, say, a steamy love scene where, say, Jim and Maddie make out and keep most of their clothes on.

I can, though, read the prompts and writing exercises in How to Write a Romance: Or, How to Write Witty Dialogue, Smoldering Love Scenes, and Happily Ever Afters, then do the “assignments” on Microsoft Word. So, even though I had to order  Romancing the Beat: Story Structure for Romance Novels (How to Write Kissing Books) by Gwen Hayes, a more conventional instructional book that, hopefully, will be useful when I get to the “kissing book” part of Reunion: Coda.

Closely Watched Packages, Part Two

And speaking of  Romancing the Beat: Story Structure for Romance Novels (How to Write Kissing Books), Amazon has it listed on my Orders page as Out for Delivery with an ETA of “before 7 PM.”

According to the tracking history provided by Amazon, the book shipped from Orlando, Florida, yesterday at 3 PM and arrived at Amazon’s Northfield, New Hampshire, facility at 7:45 AM. That’s relatively fast, considering the distance between the Sunshine State and Madison. (If I’d chosen the Kindle e-book, I would have saved both  time and money, but even in 2024, 15 years after I first held a Kindle, I still prefer reading physical books even though I have quite a few e-books now.)

On Writing & Storytelling: Moving Scene Six Forward – Is There a Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Meanwhile, in the ongoing Writing a First Novel saga….

Yesterday I was, thankfully, able to start working on the Reunion: Coda manuscript not too long after 2 PM (I believe I began writing at 2:30 PM or shortly after). I didn’t produce a large number of “new words”  (I ended up writing five paragraphs, one to conclude Jim’s conversation with Mrs. De Vargas, and the other three for a new segment of Scene Six, for a total of 424 words); my goal isn’t to end up with a huge wordcount, but rather to write good words that tell a good story.

The way I write – by the seat of my pants, with no outline, and editing as I go along – is slow and requires more patience and hard work than my personality usually allows; I usually get flustered when I must wait a long time for things to get done because I can’t do them on my own, so I’m surprised at my ability to have stuck to this project as long as I have without quitting. I’m constantly fighting the impulse to rush things, which slows me down even more. So, even though I spent nearly four hours on those five paragraphs and “only” ended up with 424 words, I made sure that those words were good ones.

Based on the ideas floating in the murky waters of my subconscious mind and on what I’ve written so far, I’ve come to two conclusions about this 13^th chapter of Reunion: Coda: Scene Six is almost finished – if I don’t finish it today, I’ll do so tomorrow, and Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios is going to need a Scene Seven…a coda, if you will.

In case you want to see some of the exchange between Jim and Mrs. DeVargas after the commencement of the South Miami High School Class of 1983, here is a brief excerpt. (If you’d like to wait till the novel is published, you can skip this part of today’s blog post.)

As I pictured those poor band members squirming nervously in their bus seats as they endured the band teacher’s harsh comments on their playing – or “slaughtering” – of Pomp and Circumstance during the processional march, I heard a familiar voice say, “Next!” in a tone that mixed command and a touch of irritation. “Come on, Mr. Garraty; you do want to get out of here before we melt in this heat, don’t you?”

It was Mrs. DeVargas, my (now) former English 4 (Advanced Placement) teacher, with an amused look on her oval face, framed – as always – by a flowing mass of blonde hair that, along with her gray eyes, made her look like a California surfer girl who had adapted well to the teaching career.

“Huh? Oh…sorry, Mrs. D,” I muttered, lowering my eyes. I handed her the folded gown first, followed by the mortarboard cap.

Mrs. DeVargas gave me a comforting smile as she took the graduation clothes and put them on the growing stack on a chair behind the table. “It’s okay, Jim. Graduations are, after all, a bit of a jolt to the system, what with all the blend of emotions you must be feeling right now.”

I feel like all the stars and planets in the Milky Way had been placed on my shoulders, I thought as I watched her check off my name on her list with a quick but efficient flick of her Bic pen. “And I thought Final Exam Week was bad,” I managed to say, still not quite able to meet her eyes with mine.

“If it’s any consolation, Jim, I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Mrs. DeVargas said in a quiet, conspiratory voice. She leaned closer to me, so only I could hear. “When I graduated from high school – many moons ago – I almost fainted at my commencement ceremony, I was so terrified. Oh, I was happy and excited, too. But…I also knew that my next destination was the University of Florida, in Gainesville…almost 3,000 miles away from Ojai. That’s where I’m from…Ojai, California.”

“Wow,” I exclaimed, my eyes wide with awe.

She smiled, seeming to remember her first impression of the campus. “Incredible, right? I’d never been east of the Mississippi until my mom and dad took me there for freshman orientation. I felt a surge of fear; I even considered going to a university closer to home. But…my parents – Dad especially – were so proud that I’d been accepted at UF. And my best friend had also gotten into their nursing program. So I decided to stick it out.” She shrugged, a hint of pride in her voice.

Mrs. DeVargas fixed her gaze upon me, her gray eyes like twin searchlights probing the recesses of my very being. With a gentle pat on my shoulder, she leaned in again, her voice assuming its familiar “classroom” tone. “Don’t fret, Mr. Garraty,” she assured me. “Harvard awaits, and you possess the mettle to thrive, young man. Now, onward. You’re stalling the line.”

Well, that’s all the news that I have for you, folks, so I’ll part company with you here. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.