Wednesday

The best news I can offer in regard to the writing is how I feel about recent comments: those comments make me feel I should continue to try.  I was especially glad to know Ava’s pleading not to be seen as she was by her son seemed to work.

When I wrote that chapter, in fact all of the writing in Part III so far, I was trying for a retrospective sort of “catching up” with events that had taken place over the twenty years elapsed between 1963 and 1983.  My intentions were to continue to gradually fill in facts and circumstances and actions between Regina and Ava and Harry (and others) that took place during those 20 missing years.  Those facts and actions would show how Regina continued to ‘order’ her world and how the once relatively strong Ava came to be so dependent upon her.

I was never certain about such a huge leap forward in time; never knew if I could pull it off.  One of the things I use as an excuse for not continuing on with the story at present is that I feel almost certain I should not make the leap forward in time.  Not by twenty years.  It’s like I came to a fork in the road near the end of Part II, and the road I chose to take was the wrong one — but now, on that road, I want to follow it on to its end.  Yet my imagination is tired and all I can see, if I continue to trudge along, is arriving at the end and not finding satisfaction and having to return to the same fork in the road and taking the other path.  So, I’m sort of sitting it out — undecided and stuck.   The comments help — thank you.

Wednesday

Four hundred twenty-one words typed today thus far.  Nothing new posted.

Wednesday

I’m stopped.  Thought I’d picked up something of the thread, at least to carry me on through a first draft, but it seems I haven’t.  I need to remember that first drafts are for trying to get there — there being some sort of story with some sort of ending.  But the writing of late isn’t encouraging.  It seems I’ve lost it, whatever I was after, since the November break to go north for jury duty;  possbily I’d lost it long before then — who knows?  And at the moment, I don’t care very much.  I am, alas, in a writerly LOW.  I have no kind words for my efforts.

Saturday

More tweaking to the end area of (b) chapter, Part III.  I may be ready to move on now, into another pov.  Just can’t decide who to visit, what thread of the story to take up again.  It may be time for some minor (or major) catastrophe to occur in life of one of my players.

There were double rainbows arcing the ocean earlier.  I’m hoping the rains have stopped in Temecula and damage hasn’t been too great.  I’m hoping you’re safe and well.

Made a few additions to ‘From Where Anne Stands” (a) chap of Part II.  Additions are the last names of the two Tom’s Claire has been previously wed to.

Friday

Additions made today to Part III (b) chapter.

I’m hopeful the power will hold through this storm and more story will unfold this afternoon.  I’m worried for my muse and her home and this weather; hoping she and all of her family are ok.

Tuesday

1,100 words and Ava is dead, Jackie Black is introduced (last name not used in this segment however), another house has fallen into disrepair with Regina at the helm, three movies from the eighties (Terms of Endearment, Flash Dance, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas) are mentioned, the vile Russian’s success with the screenplay she’d written are updated — a new partnership is sipped over crumbs in a tea shop . . .

Monday

How serendipitous is it that this particular day’s writing should have me writing the name of Martin Luther King?  I wasn’t even aware it was Martin Luther King Day until I looked at the time and thought I needed to go to the mail center down here in Rosarito (I’m expecting an order of yarn to arrive), then realized by the red-letter day on the calendar that U.S. mail service was probably observing the holiday and the order would be delayed.  The writing was already done.   Strange, but in a good way.  I think it’s an indicator I’m on the right track.  May not be — yet it seems as if I am.

The Where Were You chapter is rough — not even proofed yet for typos.  And a lot of the prose dances along in very long run-on sentences.  All definitely first draft, as it should be, I think.  The press I am feeling is to keep going forward for now.

Just checked, and since January 11th I’ve written 7,555 new words on the novel — which means I am meeting my thousand word goal per day, even if not per day.  Plus, I’ve started the next chapter of Part III and re-entered Regina’s head in May of 1983 with our anti-heroine living in a house in Connecticut with a yard decorated in spent daffodils.

Sunday

On Saturday evening I continued writing and made the leap to Part III.

I’ve posted a partial opening chapter to the new section and I’ve also gone back to an earlier chapter in Part II (Some People) and added a very few words, along with Mr. Eddlemeyer’s first name, Derek, to give pause to the area where he first encounters Claire.

The tricky part as I proceed through this opening chapter of III is going to be the selective filling in of those twenty years between 1963 and 1983 and as I do those retrospectives to also move the story lines forward through time to Regina’s final days.

It’s 8:30 AM here in Rosarito and I hope to add to this posting before the outcome of the Super Bowl Chargers/Jets game, a game I am happy to forgo watching with friends at La Estancia …

Saturday

Well.  What can I say?  Mr. Eddlemeyer popped up in the writing this morning and his exuberance would not be set down except on the screen page.  He is a tricky fellow, and in such good spirits as he makes his way to upstate New York in the company car to visit his brother.  He gave me 400 new words of story.  I’m hopeful his little trip will serve as a segue between September and November of 1963 — a bridge between the immediate aftermath of Gideon’s passing, Claire’s removal to a sanatorium (on vacation), Harold’s absence and Ava’s presence at 6-2-2, Lena’s frustration with the screenplay details, Regina’s web of paranoia, and Anne’s guilt over her mom’s betrayal.  (Not that any of these factors have been that well written thus far in the writing of Day Music!  However, these are the ideas at play in the back of my head as I write; these are the elements I hope someday to instill in the paragraphs building to chapters.)

Now the decision is whether to continue the Eddlemeyer chapter in his pov — or take on another character’s pov (with a new chapter heading?) and allow Eddlemeyer to appear within the scene?

And now it is 2:08 in the afternoon.  I’ve been to the post office and to the market and purchased Mexican pastries and written another several hundred words to add to the Eddlemeyer chapter.   All in all another 1250 or so words added today.

Friday

In total, between the short Regina pov chapter and the slightly longer Ava pov chapter (Attentions to Details) — 1843 new words today.  I’m feeling good about that.  Words spell progress.  Whether or not they’ll be THE words to tell the story is yet to be seen.  But they take the steps toward ending Part II and moving on to Part III.

I’ll have to sleep on it, but I’m considering a leap to Part III when I resume writing (hopefully tomorrow).  Part III will take place in the 80′s, not certain as to what year in the 80′s — maybe 1983 and maybe on the 20th anniversary of JFK’s assassination.  There would’ve been a lot in the media commemorating his death; I could have dialogues take place about “What were you doing, or Where were you when you heard about JFK’s death.”  I’m eager to move out of Part II and into Part III.  Looking back, the retrospective, might be a good thing to flesh out the forward-moving storyline.

As this area of the blog is something of a journal or diary about what I’ve done, and/or hope to do, will do a bit more thinking to the screen.  Part III will need to mention the success or failure of the screenplay Ava and Vladlena were wrting for the French film producer/director.  I think that film needs to have been a spectacular success, adding wealth to Ava’s estate which Regina will feed upon.

I think Anne Jenkins, in 1983 she’ll be around 34 years old, needs to have had opportunities provided for her by a close relationship with wealth, but missed opportunities because she 1) has difficulties rising above a certain low self-esteem; 2) has an equally strong sense of self and the desire to succeed or fail on her own merits, not the gifts of old dying opera stars; 3) has a moral core that informs her in no uncertain terms that Mrs. Bagot has done bad things and therefore Anne cannot accept the profits of bad things done.  I think Anne will be pregnant with a third child in 1983, be the mother of two sons, the wife of a high school chum who looks more like Sam Spade than Philip Marlowe and teaches Drama courses and the history of Drama at the city college in some city on the west coast.

I think Claire lives and works in Detroit where she will retire from an automobile parts manufacturing company and play bingo on her pension.

The above are notes that may or may not come into being in the story.  They may alter completely.  There may be an unexpected path to take once the villainous creature enters Regina’s life and starts sucking her dry of all her ill-got gains . . .

I think Beth and Beth’s mother, Pearl, will factor into this, right up until the very end.  For all I know Harold and John may turn out to be be gay lovers.  Well, this little foray into Maybe Neverland has been fun.  toodles!