Dear Reader, Let Me Tell You a Story…: About Dreams, Detours, and the Art of Not F*ing Up Your Finale

Early Afternoon, Tuesday, March 25, 2025, Miami, Florida

The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human. – Tim O’Brien

Writer’s Log, Stardate 2503.25

It’s been approximately 747 days since I began my journey to write Reunion: Coda, spurred by the desire to pen my “first novel” and bolstered by the encouragement of an old mentor. For me, it was a leap of faith when I sat down at my old desk in a house in Lithia, Florida, and, after staring at my glowing monitor for what seemed like forever, typed the first variant of my opening lines – Some phrases just get under my skin. Take “Everything happens for a reason,” for example. It’s like nails on a chalkboard to me.

(Actually, the first thing I typed was the title, Reunion: Coda – A Novel. But it’s the opening line that counts, right?)

Fast forward to today – a warm but cloudy spring day in South Florida, 233 miles away from the place where I wrote slightly more than half of Reunion: Coda, and 1,623 from my unexpected waystation in Madison, New Hampshire, where I added enough new chapters to get closer to “The End”. I’m two years older than I was on Day One of my literary odyssey, a bit sadder but wiser, and on the cusp of fulfilling a dream I’ve had since I was 14.

Funny how life works in mysterious ways. Who knew that staring at a monitor for hours would lead to pressing keys that might someday bring tears, joy, or laughter to someone’s day? Well, maybe my mentor did. And here I am, still seeking that elusive ending, hoping to wrap up my tale with a bow (or perhaps a tangle – knowing my luck) and finally see my characters reach their long-awaited conclusions.

When will I drive that final spike at my literary Promontory Point?

Shit, I wish I had a definitive answer to that question. Right now, I don’t know when I’ll put the finishing touches on Jim, Maddie, Marty, and, yes, Mark’s tale, much less fiddle with the front and back matter. I still need to decide to whom to dedicate my novel, compile a list for my Acknowledgments page, and figure out if I want to add an Afterword or not. I’d like to say I’ll have the book ready to upload to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing by late April or early May – I’m that close to those final pages, folks. But…I’ve made sunny predictions about Reunion: Coda before, only to see them proven wrong by unforeseen changes of fortune and even domiciles.

Yesterday, for instance, I didn’t add any new copy to the manuscript. That was disappointing, but it’s all part of the journey, isn’t it? I didn’t sleep well the night before, and I was exhausted, both physically and mentally. It’s a reminder that I’m at my best when I’m rested and energetic. I’m sure I will experience a few more hiccups like that before I finish Reunion: Coda, but hey, at least I’ll have some good excuses for a second cup of coffee.

What I do know is that I only have a few more scenes to add to the narrative part of the novel. How many is “a few more scenes,” you ask? I estimate I still have between eight and ten scenes to go, but I don’t have an exact number because I don’t have a detailed outline of the entire novel; I struggle to meticulously plan one scene because I’m by nature a “seat of the pants” writer and usually write spontaneously. I already intuitively know how I’m going to end my novel, in a way that mirrors the ending of Reunion: A Story and the beginning of Reunion: Coda. It’s only now that I’m near the end that I’ve become more methodical cos, you know, I don’t want to fuck up my finale.

Well, it’s about time for me to take a lunch break, so I must close for now. I’m hoping to at least outline the last scene for Chapter 29 in the meantime, and then it’s on to Chapter 30.