Late Morning, Tuesday, June 18, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire
Madison Summer Almanac
Hello, everyone. It’s a hot early summer day in eastern New Hampshire. The current temperature is 86°F (30°C) under sunny conditions. With relative humidity at 54% and the wind blowing from the south-southwest at 3 MPH (5 Km/H), the heat index is 97°F (36°C). Today’s forecast calls for mostly sunny skies and a high of 93°F (34°C). Tonight, we can expect mostly clear skies. The low will be 68°F (20°C). There’s a heat advisory in effect throughout the region.
On Writing & Storytelling: Aground Once More on the Shoals of Writer’s Block
I’ll be honest. Yesterday was a flop as far as writing goes. I followed my schedule, mostly, with just a half-hour slip from my optimal times – 12 to 2 PM for the lunch break, and 2 to 6 PM for the novel writing shift. I left my writing room at 12:30, ate between 1 and 1:30, and returned to my computer at 2:30 PM. The weather was lovely, and I felt fine, too. In other words, everything was set for writing.
But despite all that, I drew a blank on the Reunion: Coda manuscript.
I’m in this mess because Google gave me an ultimatum yesterday: either get rid of some stuff from my Google accounts – Drive, Pictures, and Gmail – or fork over some cash for a premium plan. I have a tight budget, so I didn’t want to spend more money on subscriptions (I already have Disney+, Amazon Prime Video ad-free, Amazon Prime, and Amazon Music.) But even after I tossed some old articles I wrote as a freelancer and some photos from Google Pictures, I realized that clearing enough space on the “cloud” would take forever.
My precious lunch break was delayed sorting out my files and trying to dodge the Google One Cloud storage trap, but I gave in and picked the least costly option they had: 100 GB of online storage for $19.99 a year.
I was not happy, both about the half an hour I had just thrown away and about the extra bill I had just signed up for.
Like I mentioned before, I did my best to follow my slightly postponed schedule. I had a fast lunch, stepped out to the front porch, read one of the recent issues of Time magazine, and then took it easy for a bit in the crisp air and sunlight of a New England summer afternoon.
When I got back to my desk at 2:30 PM and opened the Word doc with the novel I was writing, I figured I’d start working on the second scene of Chapter 18.
I groaned as I gazed blankly at my computer screen for an endless stretch of time. Every now and then I’d write a few words to start a sentence, only to hit the BACKSPACE key and wipe them out before they made any sense.
I spent nearly two hours on this, giving up – with a lot of irritation and regret – at 4:30 PM, an hour and a half before I usually call it a day for the daily work shift.
Clearly, fate was against me yesterday.
As frustrating as it was, I knew that not every writing day would be productive. Sometimes, the words just don’t flow, and the ideas seem to hide in the dark corners of my mind. It’s part of the creative process, and I have to accept it with patience and grace. Maybe today will be a better one. Maybe I’ll find the spark that ignites my imagination and fuels my motivation. Maybe I’ll finish that scene that has been testing my skills and patience for days. Or maybe not. Either way, I’ll keep trying, because that’s what writers do. And I know that eventually, I’ll create something amazing.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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