M. Harmon Wilkinson 7/27/26 M. Harmon Wilkinson 7/27/26

Editing: Vision More Glorious

If it sounds like the true mission here is not to get an edit so much as find a developmental editor I trust, you’d be exactly right.

M. Harmon Wilkinson 7/6/26 M. Harmon Wilkinson 7/6/26

Editing: August

I’m fine with making all those changes. They’re coming along very well. But they all involve adding to the text. The book was already too long. I’m going to have to cut again (it went through a particularly brutal cut a year and a half ago), and that’s going to be terribly difficult.

Oh, well, difficult is what authors do.

M. Harmon Wilkinson 4/29/24 M. Harmon Wilkinson 4/29/24

The idea: August

I had the idea for August quite a long time ago. (My first notes are from 2012.) It was originally going to be a road trip, the protagonist meeting a new someone chapter by chapter, with each person who helps him having their life changed in some way. Some of that road trip is still in the book, but it morphed into a love story along the way. The root of that idea was there from the very start, as the protagonist was to escape his retirement home and go off in search of his old love. I simply shrank the road trip part and expanded the story of what happens when he finds her.

M. Harmon Wilkinson 4/1/24 M. Harmon Wilkinson 4/1/24

Website: 6th anniversary

Hello from America! Speaking on behalf of my blog, I must admit to another year of inactivity. Speaking for myself as a writer, though, it has been a marvelous year. I completed second drafts of two new novels, tentatively titled Writers on the Storm and August. The first is an attempt at a humorous take on writing, and the second is a somewhat more serious exploration of love in the twilight of life.

M. Harmon Wilkinson 6/30/23 M. Harmon Wilkinson 6/30/23

UCLA course with Steven Wolfson

I presented ideas for three novels in the class, and my classmates voted overwhelmingly for a novel titled August. For class, I worked on fleshing out some key scenes. I am excited to complete the novel. It’s the story of an eighty-two-year-old man named August Norman who finds out he has ALS. He takes a last desperate shot at making something out of the little bit of life he has left. He breaks out of his nursing home, steals his daughter’s car, and embarks on a cross-country quest to find and win back his college sweetheart, May White. But love in their eighties is no simple affair, as they fight concerted family opposition.

I am now working on August pretty much full time. I love this part of writing, where the details of the story reveal themselves. It’s exciting every day.