Author Archives: Autumn

The State of Autumn

In brief? Ungood.

Not that anything horrible has happened. In fact, taken individually, the events of the past week have ranged from acceptable to downright excellent. Good rehearsals, fabulous concert, wonderful group cello lesson, awesome guest lecture, kickass edits/rewrites handed in for the forthcoming book, decent handling of freelance assignment, good private cello lesson, phenomenal revelation concerning the non-fic music essay collection and subsequent deluge of wordage, unbelievably good buy of a new winter coat this morning plus the boy had his haircut and charmed folks in the bookstore afterward as usual. Lots and lots of stuff done.

No, it’s all those things piled on top of one another. One or two would have been fine. I’ve worked so much this past week that I’m very close to burnt out, and all the regular stuff was still going on too — groceries, laundry, tidying, meal-preparation, caring for small child when he’s home, and so forth. I ran out of patience and sense of humour three days ago and have been running on empty ever since. I’m irritable and snappish. The constant checking of what time I need to be where, with whom, and carrying what equipment and/or supplies has really gotten to me. I haven’t slept well a couple of nights. Between the cracks of sunlight there is mostly Doomful Gloom outside. I wrenched my back last Friday and it’s not getting better. HRH and I are out of town tonight and tomorrow in order to meet an online friend, and what was originally a cosy little gathering ballooned into a horde of strangers I don’t know, which isn’t helping my dangerously low energy levels and instinctive desire to find a small dark hole and cover my head with a duvet.

It’s odd to realise that the actual holidays are going to be less crammed with stuff than this past week has been. No wonder I’m exhausted.

I will share with you instead the Unbelievably Good Buy of the New Winter Coat this morning. HRH bought me a lovely fluffy periwinkle blue down-filled coat last Christmas and I adore it. But it’s just too much for pre-winter wearing and the warmer winter days. My black wool coat is seven years old and beyond brushing and dry cleaning now; it just never gets to the neat stage, let alone the polished stage. I fell in love with a horrendously expensive red wool coat last year and couldn’t afford it in my wildest dreams. I found something similar this year for a quarter of the price that fit beautifully, but I still didn’t feel that I could afford it at the time. Today it was supposed to be on sale at thirty percent off. When I took it to the cash it ended up being fifty percent off, so I walked away with a new tailored cut, double-breasted, knee-length, red wool coat with an empire waist (and black buttons!) for sixty dollars. I kid you not. Today, life loves me. I wish I loved it back the way it deserves.

I am currently baking the cake part of the Evil Chocolate Tortes for tonight’s feast. I do wish I was looking forward to this gathering more than my energy is allowing me to. I just feel mostly flatline-ish.

So… Close…

All I need to do is proofread this assignment, which means tinkering with it because I always second-guess myself, and then it’s done. So naturally I am dawdling and doing everything except what I ought.

In other news, damn, but “Gaudete” sounds awesome on the cello! It hits all the ringing tones.

ETA @ 16h30: Done, done, done, handed in and gah.

Oh, For The Love Of Euterpe and Calliope…

I just crashed through a huge, thick wall of writer’s block and made a freaking enormous discovery.

Harpsichord Dreams is not one but *two* different music-essay/narrative non-fiction books. Specifically: one about the function of music in my life, and one about my life with cello.

This is both good and bad. On the one hand, it opens up an entirely new avenue to explore, down which my mind and fingers are already racing (holy sudden wordcount, Batman). On the other hand, it means I have yet another project to add to the roster, yet another unruly child to discipline and manage and feed.

For now I’m going to keep them under the same rubric and classify them as the same book/project. Very soon I’ll have to split the file in two, though. I don’t want to because it will feel like hacking half of Harpsichord Dreams away and the resulting total word count will make me sad. Maybe I’ll rename it, something like “The Narrative Non-Fiction Music Duology” and report the word count of each, then report a combined total word count. Anything to avoid sending my writer-self into morose despair. I mean, of course I know the words are all still there but just in two places instead of one. It’s like having two ten-dollar bills instead of a twenty-dollar bill. My writer-self, however, like most other writer-selves, is easily dismayed and must be coddled humoured supported.

When my brain has finished spewing rough stuff about the second incarnation of this project, I think I’m going to give it a break and turn back to the delicate work needed to tie up Orchestrated. Finishing that was my primary goal for this month, after all. And we all know that there’s nothing like a major primary goal to get the projects you’re not focusing on to multiply and demand attention.

Skiving

I have sneaked away from my laptop to come check out what the Internet’s doing behind my back. So far this assignment is going well. It’s a good product, and unless it jumps the shark in the next forty pages I’ll be able to give it a thumbs up and send it along to the correct department after writing up the evaluation tomorrow.

I must absolutely post this, as the crossover between book-lovers and music-lovers among my Gentle Readers is vast: Bookride Provides a List of Literary Rock Band Names. In other words, bands who have taken their names from books in some way, either title or character of phrase or whatnot. Tons of fun. More provided by commenters below the actual post.

ETA @ 2:45: Finished the rough draft of the review at twoish! Huzzah! And then Jan arrived and there is tea and there are scones and things are very good. So all I need to do is polish it and submit it tomorrow. This leaves me lots of time for writing, because I have goals for the month that I want to meet.

PSA For Music-Types

In my zealous search for something that will distract me from my valid and time-sensitive work, I went looking for cello-friendly sheet music for “Gaudete” and “In the Bleak Midwinter.” Because I don’t have enough music to occupy me, evidently. I woke up thinking that “Midwinter” would sound absolutely gorgeous on solo cello, and “Gaudete” popped into my head too, likely as a result of one of the songs on the new Loreena McKennitt album that has the word in it. The version I want, though, is the trad. anon. one covered by Steeleye Span.

Going through regular sheet music purchase sites was useless. Then I found ChristmasCarolMusic.org. Gentle readers, it has just about everything you can think of in almost any arrangement that you might ever want for the season. Lyrics, vocal/melody line, guitar chords, instrumental parts for C, F, Bb, and Eb instruments that all work together… you name it. Everything in public domain, that is, which covers a decent cross-section of traditional Christmas stuff. Including “Gaudete” and “Midwinter.” Bless them.

So there, that is my Good Deed for the day: sharing a link with you.

I really ought to work.

Snow!

As the cat panic-strickenly told HRH last night, and as the boy told me with great excitement this morning: SNOW!

See, snow now is okay. All the leaves are gone, it’s been bitterly cold, the calendar date is closer to December 1, and there are holiday decorations sneaking into the neighbourhood (although, thanks be to the gods, no one near us has turned them on yet).

So we have an inch-ish of snow on the ground. Although I see now that it is raining, so who knows how long it will stick around. I’d kind of like it to stay.

And I worked in bed last night after reading the boy the first chapter of A Bear Called Paddington.

Harpsichord Dreams:
New words today: 3,522
Total word count, Harpsichord Dreams: 10,302

I really, really wanted to hit 4K as a day’s work or 11K as a full count, but I’d been working for two hours and that after a full day of other work. Also, wow, it’s been a very busy past four days, and I am cumulatively zonked.

Today: my freelance stuff. Jan is stopping by for tea this afternoon, too, which will be a nice break.