Musings & Thoughts for Tuesday, March 19, 2024, or: On Writing & Storytelling – Where I Stand with Reunion: Coda Now

Late Morning/Midday, Tuesday, March 19, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi, everyone. It’s a chilly early spring day here in my corner of northern New England. Currently, the temperature is 34°F (1°C) under partly sunny conditions. With humidity at 42% and the wind blowing from the west-northwest at 9 MPH (15 KMH, the feels-like temperature is 39°F (4°C). The forecast for today calls for mostly sunny skies and a high of 40°F  (5°C). Tonight, we can expect mostly cloudy skies. The low will be 27°F (-3°C).

On Writing and Storytelling: Still Editing, Revising (With a Lot of Help from a Friend)

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I devoted my Monday work session to editing and revising the Reunion: Coda manuscript. I should be working on the novel’s Chapter 14, but I still haven’t figured out how to start the first scene. I didn’t want to waste a working day sulking about that, so I made a few revisions, including a few suggested by my Beta Reader, Denise Longrie.

Most edits were made on Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen’s final scene. Some were minor – a slight aberration regarding “point of view” issues was easily fixed. Others, such as the length of the scene, weren’t so easy to fix, so I asked Denise to please help me condense a section of “the Heineken beer” segment. And, happily, she did a quick rewrite of the slightly overlong part of the scene. I edited it a bit more afterward so that the new material jived with my writing style, but I didn’t invoke my Novelist’s Veto Powers to override her suggested changes.

I think the scene is better in its current version. Since I did some rejiggering – not a hell of a lot, but it needed a bit of input from me so that the style sounds consistent with the rest of the scene – the Heineken Beer Scene is a bit leaner but still retains the tone and emotional impact of the original version.

So, thanks, Denise! Your efforts are appreciated!

Action This Day

I don’t know what will happen today when I come back to my office to work on Reunion: Coda. Hopefully, I’ll be able to start Chapter 14; I don’t mind spending time on editing and revising, but I do want to move on and propel the story forward. As you know, I don’t do outlines, so I can’t say exactly how many chapters I need to write to finish the novel.

Right now I have 13 complete chapters, including the prologue that serves as a link between Reunion: A Story and Reunion: Coda. I know how I want my novel to end, at least in the Grand Scheme, even though I don’t have specific details in my mind now. What I don’t know is how many more chapters I need to get to the point when I can type “The End” and start worrying about the rest of the publication process. The optimist in me thinks I only need two more chapters; the pessimist predicts three.

I’ll try to mull this over when I come back to my desk after my midday rest break.  And since that part of my daily routine is drawing nigh, I better wrap this post up and get going. So…ciao for now, folks!