Category Archives: Words Words Words

Feedback

Once a week or so I get e-mail from a reader. That is, a reader of the book-type thing I write, not just the on-line stuff that falls out of my brain during the day. They’re generally positive things, thanking me for putting my books out there and communicating information that has struck a chord with the reader, enabling them to think about something in a different way and make positive changes in their lives. While I’ve had feedback about all of them, the green witch book and the spellcraft book have garnered the most feedback. All of them touch me, reminding me that launching a book into the aether actually does create ripples that can change things. An author doesn’t generally get to see the changes made in people’s lives, so the feedback is doubly precious. It encourages me on a professional level, and on a spiritual level.

Today I got a wonderfully written letter from a reader (waves at T. E.) that could have described me, had my life not taken a significant turn five years ago. She’s got the education and in-house writing and editing experience, and is thinking about making the switch to the freelance writer’s life. (How many of you are laughing right now?) She is being very intelligent, asking someone who does it for a living what it’s like.

Something Tal and I trade back and forth when we’re frustrated is a comment about the life we’ve chosen. We have lots of them to draw from: feast or famine, less stressful environment for a more stressful schedule, and so forth. But in the end, we always cap it with, “But I’d rather be doing this than anything else.” Sure, I’d like a steady and reliable paycheque every two weeks. But I’m not willing to sign away the flexibility and freedom I have to obtain one. Yes, it’s incredibly stressful not being able to count on the arrival of a cheque at a certain time in order to budget properly. Going out and trying to drum up business is stressful too, especially for someone as shy as I am. I know freelancers who have a day job to make certain there’s money coming in (like Tal, for example) and I know freelancers who have so many clients knocking at their door that they have to turn them away (like Amanda). A lot of it depends on your area of specialization. And I certainly couldn’t be doing this on my own; having a significant other who brings money into the house is of immense value. (Although there have been more years than not where we’ve both been freelancing, which is also stressful, and not really ideal.) Having a significant other who is now working at a job with Benefits! is also a huge relief. On the other hand, having to do business for other people to keep money coming in is frustrating when you’re trying to write/finish writing books to shop around; a lot of my work is work that can’t be/won’t be paid off for a couple of years yet. It’s hard to accept that one is doing work that will be (probably) recompensed at an undetermined point in the future. Not that I’d know; I haven’t worked for myself (i.e. writing my own unassigned stuff) in, well, I can’t remember how long.

So yes, it’s hard. But it’s also preferable to the kind of stress I experience working full-time somewhere else. I like the variety of things I work on. I enjoy being in control of my environment. I like having a cat on my lap as I work. I like being able to ignore the telephone or screen my calls. I like being able to break when I need to without people watching my empty desk chair and timing me. I like dealing with people almost exclusively via e-mail. There’s the self-motivation problem, but I do have a pattern that I am now aware of thanks to chronicling my exploits here in the Owlyblog, and the motivation thing actually isn’t as much of a problem as I think it is when I’m in the middle of it.

Full moon Wednesday night, summer solstice this afternoon, Mercury direct again. If this were a fairy tale, all my cheques would arrive in my mailbox at once today. As it is, I’ve had messages this morning from two of my clients telling me my invoices have been processed, and in sixish weeks I’ll have payment. (Ironically, neither of these clients are the local one who processes in two weeks, she says, tearing at her hair.)

Today: another evaluation. I’m going to see if I can get it done in one day. I’ve managed to whittle the turnaround time to about six to eight hours, but I never have consecutive hours to devote to something so it gets broken down into a day and a half. Nothing like justifying a flat fee to force your learning curve.

Entertainment

According to the ongoing preschooler-provided narration coming from the next room, there is some sort of Tragik Drahmah going on in the Isle of Sodor, AKA the train set laid out on our coffee table. There’s lots of “Oh no!”, “Thomas, are you okay?”, “Help, I am falling!”, “You did it, yaaaaay!”, and “AAAAAH! UUUURGH!” done in a fake whisper-scream, accompanied by the clunking of wooden trains and the click of magnets and the occasional train whistle as enthusiastically rendered by the boy.

And then I heard him say, “Oh, James, what has occurred?” I missed whatever James may have said in reply because I was too busy trying not to laugh. Someday I will teach him about five-cent words, ten-cent words, and twenty-five-cent words, and when it is appropriate to use them. But not today.

Ill-Timed

Having finished my work assignment by noon, then having handled a bunch of lingering accounting stuff, I read a book and then sat down to mess about with the cello.

I have been in the mood to go back and explore a Rudolph Matz suite I bought ages ago called Lights and Shadows. Except I can’t find it anywhere. And I realised as I searched for it again today that I hadn’t seen it since I packed the last apartment. I have concluded that it seems to have mysteriously vanished between there and here, along with my copy of the sheet music for “May It Be” (which isn’t anywhere near as great a loss). I haven’t misplaced anything else, only those two pieces.

So since I worked on the musical stuff for the concert last night, today I played some Bach suites instead, then fiddled around with some old band stuff for the heck of it. I came up with a new fingering for the miniature bass-drum duet-solo-thingy in “Till My Head Falls Off” and wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before because it was so blindingly obvious. I worked on “J’veux pas viellir” and cursed the freaking solo again. There’s an ugly bit that no matter what I do, it doesn’t sound good. But apart from that bit I polished the delivery and decided that should I ever play this again in performance, I’m making it completely legato, original be damned. (Heck, I’ve already messed with it by transposing and rewriting parts of it, why not make the cheerful heresy complete?) I think something a lot more flowing and resonant would sound better than the choppy staccato stuff. Staying close to the original is boring anyway (says the girl who hacked and hacked and hacked at “The Bonny Swans” and eventually settled on something that kind of sort of sounded like something Loreena McKennitt might have done in a studio once, and whose compatriots in musical crime gave songs such as “First We Take Manhattan” and “Insensitive” drastic makeovers).

But through it all, there was a part of my mind today that was saying, “Hey, you know, this instrument has really mellowed over the past couple of years. I really enjoy this sound.”

And then I found the hole.

The seam between the back and the rib between the upper and lower bouts on the right side is starting to separate. It’s not a real hole yet, but it will be as the gap continues to widen. At the moment there a millimetre of space between the two, held together with bits of varnish.

Wow, is this ever a bad, bad time for this to happen.

Fixing this will cost as much as, or possibly more than, that lateral move to the 7/8. It’s the same position our station wagon was in: the repairs it needed would cost more than the value of the vehicle itself. Repairing this cello won’t increase its value, so it’s like sinking money into a black hole when I could be putting the capital towards the new cello instead. Since I haven’t the money now to replace it, nor is the 7/8 I wanted currently available, I just have to be extra super obsessively careful with this one until the concert is over. And pray a lot.

Concert!

This is your two-week warning, faithful orchestra groupies. July 1 is coming up, which means that the annual Canada Day concert presented by the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra is also nigh!

On Tuesday July 1 the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra will be giving a free (yes, free!) concert as part of the overall Canada Day celebrations in conjunction with Pointe-Claire Village. We do this every year, and it’s always terrific fun.

This year’s programme features:

Symphony no. 3 – Mozart
Overture to The Marriage of Figaro – Mozart
Symphony no. 32 – Mozart
Selections from South Pacific – Richard Rodgers
Selections from My Fair Lady – Frederick Loewe
Selections from The Sound of Music – Richard Rodgers

The concert begins at 20h00. As always, it is being presented at St-Joachim church in Pointe-Claire Village, located right on the waterfront at 2 Ste-Anne Street, a block and a half south of Lakeshore Road. The 211 bus from Lionel-Groulx metro drops you right at the corner of Sainte-Anne and Lakeshore. Here’s a map to give you a general idea. I usually encourage those facing public transport to get together and coax a vehicle-enabled friend along by offering to buy them an ice cream or something. It works nicely, and it’s fun to go with a group. And hey, you can’t beat the price. Be aware that if you’re driving, parking will be at a premium because of the whole Canada Day festivities thing going on. Give yourself extra time to find a parking place and walk to the church, which will be packed with people.

Free classical music! Soul-enriching culture! And as an enticing bonus, the fireworks are scheduled for ten PM, right after we finish, and the church steps are a glorious spot from which to watch them.

Write it on your calendar, tell all your friends and family members! The more the merrier!

Difficult Times

Not long after I finished Maggie’s farewell post yesterday, Liam woke up from his nap and stumbled into my office, slightly wild-eyed.

“I can’t find Maggie-cat,” he said.

My heart, which had already gone through the metaphorical wringer while writing the post, broke again.

“No, honey,” I said. “That’s because she’s dead. She’s gone.”

“I’ll look for her later,” he said after a moment, his face brightening.

The halves of my heart each broke again. The lump I’d been coaxing away reappeared in my throat, and I almost reached for the dangerously low supply of Kleenex.

“Maggie’s not coming back,” I said. “She died. People don’t come back the way we want them to when they die.”

He backed up until he hit the wall behind him, staring at me. Then he brought his hands up in front of him, sort of cupping them.

“We can get a new Maggie-cat?” he said hopefully.

“No, love,” I said, sitting on the floor in front of him. “Gryff is our new cat. Maybe someday we’ll get another cat again, but not for a long time. And it wouldn’t be the real Maggie-cat, even if it looked like her.”

“I want my Maggie,” he said piteously, much softer than he’d spoken before.

“I know,” I said. “I do, too. But she’s gone now.”

He bent forward and leaned his head against my shoulder. We stayed like that for a few minutes.

“Hey, guy,” I said. “You know what? In your toy box at Grandma and Papa’s house you have a stuffed Maggie-cat. When we go over this afternoon, why don’t you ask if you can bring her home? That way you’ll remember Maggie every time you look at it, and you can hug it and give it pats and tell it how much you love her.”

“Okay,” he said, brightening up. And when we got there the little stuffed black and white cat was sitting on his bed. He caught it up and asked me if we could bring it home, and I told him to ask his grandmother. She told him it would be all right if I said yes, so he carried it with him to the dinner table, brought it home, and slept with it. It’s gone to the caregiver’s with him today instead of Bun-Bun.

I wish I had a stuffed Maggie-cat to fill what Phnee referred to as the Maggie-shaped hole in my heart. But both Cricket and Nixie curled up with me when I watched the Carlo Rota Othello last night (which was an excellent adaptation with very good performances), something they rarely did because Maggie was always there first. I’ve been preparing to say goodbye to her for over three years now, and I’m handling her loss much better than I expected to. There are moments, though, where I expect to see her, or I think about something she used to do, and I remember how much I love her, and I have to stop what I’m doing. She was so much a part of my life.

Thank you to everyone who called or e-mailed or left comments to the farewell post. Your thoughts and condolences are deeply appreciated. I know so many of you loved her, too.