Author Archives: Autumn

Back To Work On The Book That Will Probably Not Be Known As ESTC

I just got the MS back for the spiritual pregnancy book, with the assurance that it feels good and hits the general mark at which I was throwing the ideas.

I am one huge sigh of relief. The problem with being the first to write a book on a particular topic is that you have zero context in which to place it.

I now have two weeks to tweak it and add the things that resolved in my brain the week after I submitted it. And I’ll try to lose another three thousand words or so, to get it closer to the target MS length. Some time away from it has already helped my perception of the work, for which I am truly thankful.

While I do that, we’re trying to come up with alternate titles because marketing’s concerned about the obscurity of the main title. I’m hoping that working on the MS will get my mind going on that too, because over the weekend I drew a complete blank on the problem.

Concert Recap

After every concert we put on, I want to come home and journal about how this was The Best Concert Ever! And what that says to me is that I (a) enjoy them, (b) feel confident about our capabilities, and (c) the concerts go really really well, (d) the presence of an audience adds that extra edge, and (e) the concerts are fun. And evidently the audiences agree with me, because they keep coming back.

Last night was excellent. I’ll be riding the high for quite some time.

For my part, I was concerned about my performance in the Beethoven. September and October were horribly busy months, where I couldn’t practice as I wanted to practice (which quickly became the way I needed to practice), and trying to catch up in November proved extremely difficult. I’m proud to say I pulled it off: I didn’t savage the really difficult bits, only twice fell apart and stopped playing altogether for a bar or two, and nailed some of the stuff that had been really stonewalling me. The entire orchestra melded into a seamless Beethoven-playing machine, and achieved some sort of para-Beethoven performance that even we didn’t anticipate. Not that we expected it to go badly; it’s just that we’d never played it quite like that before. Everything else on the programme went smoothly as well, but the Beethoven simply overshadowed it all.

Also, my debut as a triangle player was a triumph.

The house was about three-quarters full, which was very gratifying because there’s nothing worse for a performer than to look out into the audience and behold a sea of empty seats: it’s demoralizing. And in the end, three people who I hadn’t been expecting showed up as well as the three I knew would be there. Thank you t!, Jan, MLG, Jeff, Paze, and HRH; your presence meant a lot to me. (Plus you got to enjoy some really, really fine music.) And I appreciate all the well-wishes for our season opener left in form of journal comments and phone and e-mail messages from those who couldn’t make it, too.

And I discovered that having a dress rehearsal the morning of the concert date itself does dreadful things to my sense of time and the day’s schedule. I’m thankful that this was an exception to the rule.

Next up: the first section of the Messiah!

Psyched

This concert is going to rock. I also have a percussion solo, or more correctly, I play when everyone else is playing but I play the only example of a particular percussive instrument in this concert. (Yes, I play the cello. Apparently I also have a secret identity. Don’t worry, Mousme, your job is safe.)

My only regret about the day is not being able to share the fun over at the ADZO household this afternoon, because I really, really could have gone for a relaxing family birthday thing with good friends. (Well, I also regret not being able to go to band practice today to test out my new cello pickup, but that can happen next weekend.)

The concert is at 19h30 tonight, folks, and the location and directions and particulars can be found here. It’s public, and the more the merrier!

The General Novemberity Wearing Me Down

Matthew Cheney made me laugh today.

If you write about the weather, use as many adjectives as you can, or else your nouns will wilt and become adverbs.

Some coaches insist adverbs are stronger than nouns, but an independent panel of statisticians has proved otherwise. Despite appearances, though, statisticians don’t like nouns so much as they adore conjunctions.

The whole list of deliberately obtuse writing rules can be found here. And I found them via Justine.

Liam had a terrifying asthma attack late Wednesday night, triggered by a coughing fit in bed. The coughs compounded, and his bronchial tubes constricted, and then he started crying because he was upset and scared, and the whole thing just snowballed and got worse and worse. We finally got a shot of his inhaler contents into him after a struggle, which was surprising on its own because he usually loves his little mask, but he was having so much trouble breathing because he was coughing and crying that he wouldn’t let us put the mask up to his face. It took a while to get him to calm down enough to even give him a single breath of the medication, and then he still sounded awful all night. I lay awake all night listening to him over the monitor, and dealt with anxiety attacks the likes of which I haven’t had in about eight years, sourced only partially by the worry about the decision to not take him to the hospital. I hate this time of year. It’s wet, and damp, and there isn’t enough sunlight, and this year seems worse than others, somehow. I got quite ill the next morning, which didn’t help. HRH stayed home because neither Liam nor I were going to be able to handle the day otherwise, neither of us being very user-friendly or even available at times. I felt much better by the end of the afternoon. And I even made cookies, lovely excellent cookies from a newly tweaked recipe, which very closely resemble cookies from a long-gone bakery I used to visit now and again. (Basic shortbread ingredients and proprotions, being sure to use icing sugar instead of granulated, add one egg, plus loads of chocolate chips; chill for two hours; roll and bake. Once the fuses in the oven have been replaced, that is. You mightn’t need to do that last bit.)

But I had a wonderful, wonderful night of sleep last night, and a lovely outing this morning. I was dropped off at daycare with Liam and spent some time playing with him, his caregiver, and one of the other kids. I’ve missed this, since HRH has taken over the boy-chauffeuring job. I got to see Liam open the rabbit’s cage and lean in gently to kiss him, and Boo reach his fuzzy little nose up to kiss him gently back, several times. It was exquisitely cute, and did wonders to soothe the soul of Novemberity/sick/bad sleep ravages. Then I took the metro back and walked to the mall, picked up some sweaters for me and new PJs for the boy, and bussed home. The weather may be overcast but it’s so lovely and warm. It was a good day for an outing.

Since I’ve had the whole day to myself on Liam’s daycare days I’ve been trying to work as soon as he leaves, and this week has proven to me that I shouldn’t even sit down at the computer until after lunch. If I do, then the morning gets wasted anyhow, and I feel upset because I haven’t accomplished any work and half the day is gone. Well, at least I gave it a chance. From now on, the morning is for music and reading and walks. The afternoon is for work. If that’s how my brain has to separate things, then that’s how it’s going to happen. I get exactly the same amount of work done if I sit here for eight hours or three, so why force myself to be here for those first five if I can put them to other practical use?

Now I have web work to do.

Novella Update

Total word count, Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro: 25,111
Total words Monday: 2,380

This part is taking a lot longer to explore than I expected it to, and it’s growing unwieldy and out of proportion with the rest of the novella as a result. I may just stop writing it and jump to the next event. This one is going to have to be broken down, focused, and interspersed with the others in order to give it the correct rhythm, and I can’t properly do that until there are others with which to give it context.

tearful the day

While I work I’m listening to the new Evanescence album The Open Door for the first time, and enjoying it more than I enjoyed the first album.

And then something in my brain that was paying attention to the music knocked on the other part of my brain that was writing, and said, “Excuse me, but we have a very well-done integration thing happening here, and it’s really very interesting. I think you should listen more closely.”

I know I’ve had music and masses on the brain for the past two weeks, but there’s really nothing like hearing Mozart woven into gothic rock, and woven in (thankfully) well.