{"id":3473,"date":"2026-07-17T06:05:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T13:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=3473"},"modified":"2026-07-16T20:01:04","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T03:01:04","slug":"bit-by-bit-putting-it-together-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2026\/07\/17\/bit-by-bit-putting-it-together-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Bit by Bit Putting it Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you don\u2019t recognize the phraseology in the headline, it\u2019s from a song in the musical Sunday in the Park With George <\/em>by Stephen Sondheim. \u00a0The George in question is a French artist named George Seurat, a pointillist, who, instead of painting with brush strokes, did so with thousands of tiny dots of color. \u00a0It\u2019s been close to forty years since I saw the play, but as I recall, someone looks at one of Seurat\u2019s paintings and asks him how he goes about doing it. \u00a0He replies that first he starts with a bit of sky, and then, bit by bit, the rest of the painting comes into focus.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot how writing books works, too. \u00a0I start with a tiny piece and gradually\u2014one scene at a time and one page at a time\u2014the story comes into focus. When I shut down the computer last night the manuscript stood at 42,360 words or 44.55% of the book. \u00a0How do I know that? \u00a0The book is supposed to be around 100,000 words, give or take, because twenty books with that number of words fit in standard-sized shipping \u00a0boxes. \u00a0That means I count the words every day. \u00a0That\u2019s how I can tell that I’m making forward progress.<\/p>\n

The encouraging thing about being at 44% is that I\u2019m that much closer to 60%. \u00a0In my experience, that\u2019s usually the beginning of the banana peel when, the road to the end of the story is all downhill and fairly smooth sailing.<\/p>\n

The book remains Unnamed Joanna #22<\/em>. \u00a0I come from an era when no one knew what baby would be until he\/she arrived, so I don\u2019t have a name for sure yet, but one is niggling away at the edge of my mind. \u00a0I\u2019m thinking about End Game, but I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s going to make it to the finish line.<\/p>\n

But the fact is that when I sat down to write this, the first thing that came to mind was that song. \u00a0My head isn\u2019t full of what Professor Henry Higgins would call \u201ccotton, hay, and rags.\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s full of songs and lyrics, so many in fact it\u2019s a wonder there\u2019s any bandwidth left over for writing. \u00a0(Wait, did I just use the word bandwidth in a piece of casual correspondence? \u00a0Maybe after forty years of being married to a now-retired electronics engineer, some of the double E lingo has rubbed off on me.)<\/p>\n

Some of the songs rattling around in my head are the ones our mother sang to us, ones my kids, grandkids, and greats will never know, including this tear jerker:<\/p>\n

Oh, they cut down the old pine tree<\/em><\/p>\n

And they hauled it away to the mill<\/em><\/p>\n

To make a coffin of pine for that sweetheart of mine<\/em><\/p>\n

They cut down the old pine tree. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

But she\u2019s not alone in her grave tonight<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2019Tis there my heart will ever be<\/em><\/p>\n

Though we drifted apart\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Still they cut down my heart.<\/em><\/p>\n

When they cut down the old pine tree.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I\u2019m lying awake in the middle of the night, some random, long-ago song will turn up out of nowhere and I\u2019ll spend the next hour or so trying to recreate the words. \u00a0Night before last the one that kept me awake for a while was Patti Page\u2019s 1953 hit, How Much is that Doggie in the Window. \u00a0<\/em>Most of the lyrics turned up in good order, but the one that stumped me was the two syllable word for the pet alternative she didn\u2019t want in place of a dog. \u00a0It took a while, but I finally landed on the right answer\u2014BUNNY.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it\u2019s an old Girl Scout song:<\/p>\n

Oh, Mr. Johnny Quebec how could you be so mean?<\/em><\/p>\n

I told you you\u2019d be sorry for inventing that machine<\/em><\/p>\n

Now all the neighbor’s cats and dogs will never no more be seen<\/em><\/p>\n

They\u2019ll all be ground to sausages in Johnny Quebec\u2019s machine.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you think that one’s politically incorrect there\u2019s always:<\/p>\n

Please Mr. Custer,\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t make me go.<\/em><\/p>\n

Please Mr. Custer,\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t wanna go.<\/em><\/p>\n

There a injun waiting out there<\/em><\/p>\n

Just waitin\u2019 to take my hair.<\/em><\/p>\n

A coward I\u2019ve been called,<\/em><\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t wanna end up dead or bald.<\/em><\/p>\n

And if you think that one’s bad, how about The Battle of New Orleans<\/em>?<\/p>\n

We fired our cannon till the barrel melted down<\/em><\/p>\n

So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round<\/em><\/p>\n

We filled his head with cannonballs and powdered his behind<\/em><\/p>\n

And when we touched the powder off the gator lost his mind.<\/em><\/p>\n

PETA would definitely be up at arms about that one!<\/p>\n

But now that I\u2019ve exposed you to just a tiny bit of the junk that\u2019s rattling around in my head, you\u2019re probably as astonished as I am that there\u2019s still room enough for me to write books, but there is, and it\u2019s time for me to go back to my real work and continue putting it together, bit by bit.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I\u2019m wishing you all a happy Friday and hoping I started your day with a smile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you don\u2019t recognize the phraseology in the headline, it\u2019s from a song in the musical Sunday in the Park With George by Stephen Sondheim. \u00a0The George in question is a French artist named George Seurat, a pointillist, who, instead of painting with brush strokes, did so with thousands of tiny dots of color. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-U1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3474,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473\/revisions\/3474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}