Musings & Thoughts for Saturday, March 23, 2024, or: Snow Storm Follies

Late Morning/Early Afternoon, Saturday, March 23, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hey, there, folks. It’s a decidedly wintry day here in my corner of New England. Even though it is early spring, we are in the midst of a winter storm. It started snowing last night, and it has not stopped since. Currently, the temperature is 23°F (-5°C) under, natch, snowy conditions. With the wind blowing from the north at 6 MPH (10 KMH) and humidity at 85%, the wind chill factor is 21°F (-6°C). Today’s forecast calls for heavy snow and a high of 28°F (-2°C). Tonight, heavy snow will continue. The low will be 17°F (-8°C).

On Writing & Storytelling: Making Progress with the Kindle Create Edition of Reunion: Coda

If you read yesterday’s post, you will not be surprised that I did not feel inspired to start Chapter 14 of Reunion: Coda. I was disappointed, yes, but I was also determined to work on the novel regardless, even if it “just” involved other tasks, such as fixing formatting issues caused by the interaction between Kindle Create and Microsoft Word for Office.

For the most part, when you add a Word .docx file to Amazon’s Kindle Create app for PC, the program does a relatively good job of converting your text to the two formats you need to use when you finish your masterpiece and upload it to Kindle Direct Publishing to create print and e-book editions. Most of your original formatting from Word will still be there, plus Kindle Create can automatically detect your chapters if you’ve used the various Headings options on the word processor.

However, most is not all; Kindle Create doesn’t, for instance, keep “AM” or “PM” time-related suffixes in headings and subheadings such as “7:05 AM – SMSH Music Department.”  When you open your new project file and look at your work-in-progress (WIP), you’ll see that even if you used proper capitalization on Word, your headings or subheadings will look like this:

7:05 Am, Smsh Music Department

Now, Kindle Create does have a workaround, but you must go to the Text Properties window (on the right of your screen) and look for Current Element, then click on Advanced Font Options until you find the UPPER CASE option.

It’s not a difficult task, but if you use subheadings in every chapter – as I do in both books of the Reunion Duology – it can be both time-consuming and annoying. It’s probably a bug in the Kindle Create app; I know for damn sure that it’s not a user error issue.

I spent quite a bit of time fixing the affected subheads, and I am sure that I’ll be inspecting the Reunion: Coda file on Kindle Create to make sure I caught all of the inconsistent capitalizations forced on me by the buggy app.

Another thing I look for is missing paragraph breaks in the text. Now, I sometimes do write long expository paragraphs when I write, either on my blog or in my fiction, but generally, I try to keep them at a reasonable length and not, say, like something out of a 19th-century novel.

Well, I have had to pore over the Kindle Create edition of Reunion: Coda to reinsert paragraph breaks that I made on the original Word document but were somehow removed by the app when I uploaded it. Again, like the “UPPER CASE” issue, it’s not a difficult “housekeeping” chore, but it eats up time and energy – and I get incredibly annoyed with it.  

Saturday Plans

It’s snowing steadily and the front porch is buried beneath the chilly white stuff, so I obviously don’t plan to go outside. It’s too cold, for one, and there’s no incentive for me to go outside anyway. The snow is so deep that even with snow boots and hiking poles it would be difficult for me to venture beyond the front porch.

Besides, other than Patti and Marc, I don’t know any of the neighbors, and even though I will admit that I’m a friendly person, I’m also a painfully shy one, at least in my offline life. Especially when it comes to talking to women, and even more so if they’re younger and attractive. I’ve heard that one of my neighbors is (a) a divorced woman and (b) attractive, and even though I’m not confident enough to even think about dating again, I’m torn between wanting to at least say “hi” to her if I should cross paths with her and keeping a wary, respectful distance.

So, other than getting fresh air, sunshine, and exercise, I don’t have much of an incentive to sally forth in this weather. It’s cloudy, the sun is hidden behind a veil of whites and grays, and it’s bone-chillingly cold outside.

So, for me, the only question left is: Do I work today, or take the day off?

I should relax and have some fun on this Snow Day. I might not have all of my Blu-ray titles at hand – too many of them are still boxed up in the garage, to my never-ending frustration – but I do have enough movies on HD and UHD Blus to keep myself from getting bored.

I could say the same thing about my books. My bookcases have not been worked on since January – another vexing issue that makes me wish I’d gotten different, ready-made bookcases instead of IKEA ones – but I do have books I can read. Not necessarily the titles I want to read the most, but…..

I am listening to music as I write this: My Amazon Music app is playing selections from the digital version of the soundtrack from The War: A Ken Burns Film (2007). I have all four of the Legacy albums that comprise the entire collection of The War soundtracks, so I can – in theory – retire to my bedroom and listen to the same music by playing the CDs.

I could also play computer games, such as Regiments, Cold Waters, Crusade in Europe (which I have not played since I arrived here in Madison), or even Leap of Faith or FreshWomen. So, there’s that.

Anyway…I don’t know what I’ll do today if I decide to not work on my novel today. But…it’s nice to know that I have options.