Category Archives: Writing

Enter The Clue By Four

The copyedits for the anthology landed in my in-box this morning.

Naturally, even though I didn’t write 98% of this ms., my first instinct was to quail.

I should really remember that I’m very good at my job more often. The ms. is pretty darn clean, with only a handful of queries in the first half that I’ve done today, most of which I can handle myself without checking with the authors. Most of the copyedits are simply punctuation and house style stuff.

I am good at what I do. Why does this fact elude me so often?

Ongoing

Doing the evaluation of the final third of Orchestrated today. Why is it not finished, when I have had all week to work on it? I… keep falling asleep. No, really. Not because it’s bad or boring, just because my body has been wresting the steering wheel out of my hands and saying “NOW WE WILL NAP” around two every day, and bang, my eyes are closing and I have to put the ms. or whatever book I’m reading down and pass out for an hour or so. Then it’s cello and making dinner and the boys are home, and yeah.

What I’m discovering about the ms. is that it flows decently well. I haven’t yet found a gap or a hole that really absolutely needs to be filled; there’s nothing obvious missing. Things need to be tightened up here and there or expanded a tiny bit, but overall it’s surprisingly solid. I also have really good places that can be used as chapter break points. I may need to go back and insert one or two more clues to the eventual crisis of a main character, but that’s actually minor. I found a place where some of my intro-stuff-written-for-me-but-unnecessary-for-readers can go, and in the new place set in dialogue will actually serve the purpose of character interaction/deepening.

I read pretty much the entirety of Perri Knize’s Grand Obsession in one day. It was fabulous. I was worried at one or two points that it was going to veer a bit too far into the mystical (and coming from me that’s saying something) but it righted itself in time. After all, how do you define how music affects us? It’s a twofold story about a woman deciding to study piano in middle age and buying one, then trying to understand what the personal connection to a specific instrument is (not violin or cello or piano, but one specific example of the chosen instrument), and an exploration of how pianos are built and maintained.

We had out second rehearsal with our third guest conductor and I enjoyed it even more than the first. He’s good. There is a problem with his voice carrying to the back, but he’s terrific in his bilingualism, and his musicality and his interaction are fabulous. He knows exactly what to work to smooth out problems, and how to phrase what he’s looking for. We’ve added Grieg’s Norwegian Dances to the programme, and (hurrah!) Vaughn Williams’ English Folk Song suite. Of course, the Vaughn Williams starts in A-flat major (F minor? no, pretty sure it’s Ab) which is four flats, augh! I have enough trouble remembering to flatten my As, and he wants me to flatten my Ds as well? But it is Vaughn Williams and I am over the moon.

Also in cello news, while I was working on some ensemble stuff earlier this week and trying to isolate why my intonation was unstable, my left elbow kind of said, “Oh, I’ve got it,” and moved a millimetre or two forward on the horizontal axis, all on its own. And it solved the problem. I was amazed and very grateful to it. Perhaps the next time I have a problem of some kind I shall consult it.

My friendly neighbourhood postperson brought me my two Harmony circular needles I ordered from KnitPicks today, along with the sample skein of green Pima cotton yarn I ordered. The colour’s a bit bright for the sweater I ultimately wanted it for; it was a bit less yellow on my monitor. Not a problem; I ordered it to test it out in a washcloth kind of swatch anyhow.

Did the groceries and some birthday shopping this morning and also acquired a new blouse for myself. It never ceases to amaze me how much I hate shopping for clothes, and yet have managed to acquire two new pairs of shoes, two blouses, and three sweaters in the past month. They all kind of ambushed me, though; it’s not like I decided I needed new stuff and went looking. Well, okay, I needed new black shoes, but I found them by accident just browsing in Winners. And I went into a store because I remembered seeing a blouse and ended up not buying it but two other sweaters. Still. And while I bought the blouse today I wondered, Where do I wear all this stuff other than to orchestra and my cello lessons? I work at home. I mean, I occasionally go out, but not often. I wear jeans and t-shirts most of the time. Maybe I’ll institute a one-day-a-week workday in the library just so I can wear slightly nicer stuff. Good grief.

Right-o; back to work. Also need to collect wrapping paper and addresses for a trip to the post office later.

Today’s Plan

Know what I’m doing today, after I finish baking oatmeal cookies? (And in between batches, chasing the stubborn little grey mackerel tabby off the top of the warm stove, drat her paws and whiskers?)

Research in the living room! I have books and pens and notebooks and sticky tabs and my new recording of the Planet Earth soundtrack (George Fenton, how I love thee) to keep me company. I have the Orchestrated ms. to work on, and coven/writing research to do, and a new book to read to help me with Harpsichord Dreams. There ought to be some celloing in there as well. In other words, today is a work day that emphatically does not feel like one, seeming instead like a day of personal indulgence. We should all have more of these.

Today’s Grand Announcement

The taxes are finished! Woo-hoo! Or more correctly, the pile of prep for my taxes to be done by our very excellent accountant is finished. All the required exchange rates for various dates were located and calculated accordingly, then the final pile of receipts added up, and everything sorted into different labelled envelopes and clean new file folders. (Elapsed time: three hours.) I very strongly suspect there will be decent coin returned to me by the government.

Yay me!

Now to move into the living room with the Orchestrated ms. again, pen in hand.

Today’s List

1. There are fifteen crocuses in the front garden.

2. There are ants in the laundry room. (Items one plus two = spring.)

3. Cautiously working my way through a few pieces of a Lindt Petits Desserts Chocolate Mousse bar. No adverse reaction as of yet, and it’s been half an hour. Encouraging, as the dark chocolate reaction was immediate burning on the tongue.

4. The boy waved vigorously to the metro drivers on our trip downtown and received surprised and delighted waves in return.

5. A quarter of the way through printing Orchestrated and all’s well. I had saved it to a USB key and taken it to the local print shop to get it done, but remembered while I was in line that I’d used comments. When you print a document with comments it shrinks the text and forces the page into the upper left corner to fit the comments in the right margin, which wastes a lot of paper and makes the text almost impossible to read. I bought more printer paper and came home to do it myself in twenty-page increments after stripping the comments out. Neither ink nor paper nor printer have caused issues so far. (Printing large documents usually causes problems of some kind for me.)

Aha, just as I expected; low ink. Argh. Had to happen at some point. Well, I have some in the cupboard, along with the syringe; I’ll refill it and that will be that.

Success!

Because I know you’re all on the edge of your seats, the two final takes of the entire script were great. I think it has more to do with recording them in the living room rather than my office, but the change in register and expression didn’t hurt. So he’s got at least four takes of each track to choose from, and he can edit or adjust them as he pleases.

The boy and I are going downtown in about forty-five minutes to hand in the work (and be paid, woohoo!), then we pick Grandma up at the hospital after some tests and take her and the boy to her house. The rest of the day is work for me, and as everything else is off my plate, that means I get to print out Orchestrated and start reading. I’m looking forward to it.

In Which She Natters About Cello Stuff, With A Side Of Diary

It’s confirmed: we’re trying out a third conductor tonight! And I am very happy because there was a bit of kerfuffle about memberships dues not covering what this conductor requested as his fee, but the majority of members were okay with paying a supplement to obtain his services for this concert. If we decide he’s the one for us then membership fees will go up, and I’m perfectly fine with that; we pay a ridiculously low fee as it is, and more than doubling it only brings us to ten dollars per month the orchestra plays each year. If he’s as good as his reputation suggests he is, we’d be getting a real deal. Also, audiences would increase because of his affiliation with other musical events and organisations, and our recruiting of new members would also increase. There’s a lot of potential here.

Apparently we are playing Schubert’s third symphony as the main course for the July concert. So naturally, while looking for audio reference, I discovered that I own only the first, second, and fourth symphonies. I went away and thought about it for a while, then remembered that I’d bought a full six-symphony set the last time we did a Schubert symphony (the fifth?), because the set was less expensive than a single CD with the fifth on it. I had to hunt it out, though. It wasn’t with my other Schubert CDs. I blame the boy, who used to pull CDs out and then reshelve them in interesting new places. I checked my records and apparently I’ve played Schubert’s third before. I have no memory of it, but then, it was in 2003, which was six years ago. However I played it then, chances are rather good that I’ll play it much better now.

I am so very excited to be working with this conductor.

I dragged myself out of the maudlin cold-heavy apathy yesterday to go down town for a meeting about this meditation recording gig. I now have the equipment and some reference DVDs to inspire my delivery of the script. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I came home in a better mood than I’d left, and feeling much healthier, too. I practised not once but twice, the second time with a strict metronome set at ruthless performance speed. I uploaded vacation photos. I opened windows (HRH took the plastic off the front living room Wall of Glass, huzzah!). I made a delicious pot of chicken cacciatore (for some reason, there are never any leftovers). And I set up the breadmaker to start its thing at three in the morning so we’d all have fresh bread at breakfast (because I forgot to make it the regular way yesterday and there wasn’t enough time for me to make it last night before I passed out).

Today: Recording, laundry, celloing, doing something with the shoulder roast that’s defrosting. I can’t even remember if it’s beef or pork (it’s from the organic farmers, so doesn’t have a label beyond ‘shoulder roast’), although I suspect it is pork.

And shh, don’t make any sudden moves: I’ve actually been starting to think about Orchestrated with more interest again. The month away from it killed my momentum. I’m not sure whether to print the first draft out and read it while making notes longhand, or just go back to the beginning of the file and start work. I may just print out the first two chapters, as those are the ones that need the most rearranging.