Monthly Archives: June 2008

Argh

Gryff broke my printer last night. He tried to jump up on my lap, discovered there wasn’t enough room between my legs and the keyboard tray, and fell off onto the printer (which was printing up a large document). It promptly went CLUNK and whirred a bit, then stopped and began displaying a carriage jam error. Forty-five minutes of poking and reseating and turnign it off and on and unplugging cables and troubleshooting and trying all sorts of solutions found via the Internet, HRH and I have declared it Officially Dead. I was livid.

Like I need another expense right now. Well, it can wait until all those Cheques In The Mail come to roost in the mailbox sometime in late July.

While seeking solutions on-line, I discovered a whole slew of people who have encountered the same error message and who have not been able to fix it, or get HP to solve the problem. Great. This is something I never discovered when I did my obsessive research before buying the printer. I mean sure, I encountered the occasional negative review citing problems, but the majority of them were okay and even positive.

On the bright side, I recently received a letter from the Aide financière aux études for Quebec informing me that I might be one of those who could benefit from a recent class action ruling concerning student loans obtained in 1997-98, and sure enough, when I logged into the website yesterday I discovered that I, like many others from that particular time period, had overpaid interest on the loan and was eligible for a refund. So I initiated the process and I’ll be getting a refund of just under two hundred dollars in mid-July. I always feel a grim satisfaction when a government has to send me money, instead of me having to write them a cheque or being told that oops, sorry, those taxes we accepted way back then have been recalculated and you owe us a bunch of money plus interest even though neither you nor we knew, ha ha ha.

And in completely unrelated news, I am devouring Marie Brennan’s Midnight Never Come.

LATER: Huh. I realised that part of what I wanted to do today was print out reference photos for the YA music book, and in a fit of pique tried turning the printer on. It’s working again. Of course, it randomly spews out pages of dots and dashes now and again when I haven’t sent anything to be printed, but it’s printing. I think a night on its own to consider the error of its ways plus me waxing grr about it in a journal entry may have spurred it to attempt cooperation.

EVEN LATER: Nope, dead. Oh well.

LATER STILL: Okay, this is stupid. Maybe if I drop it from about shoulder height it will decide if it will work continually or be conclusively dead. Because this sometimes-yes-sometimes-no is making me very, very cranky.

Pet Peeves

Words mean things. Crazy, I know, but they do. And they have specific meanings.

Lately I’ve been encountering a lot of misused terms. These three groups of people are the ones that have been driving me up the wall and down the other side lately.

– People who identify something as a cello when it is very obviously a double bass. If you’re going to tag or describe a photo or other item, make sure it actually is or depicts what you say it is. Otherwise, you look like you don’t know what you’re talking about.

– People who describe something as “vintage” when it’s under twenty years old.

– People who describe or tag something as “antique” when it’s less than fifty years old. (The stickler in me defines it as one hundred years or older, but I understand that’s not how the rest of the world operates. Let’s compromise on a nice round eighty.)

Gah.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled blog-reading.

And It Continues…

This morning in the car the boy delivered a creditable version of the chorus to “The Mesopotamians”. He hesitates on Gilgamesh and slurs through Ashurbanipal, but it’s all there. I can’t tell you how hilarious it is to hear a three year old say Hammurabi and Gilgamesh.

He requests that one three times in a row, and “Dr. Worm” as well. He knows three times is the limit, no matter how much we love TMBG.

At some point I will introduce him properly to G&S.

Indoctrination

We had a great weekend, partly due to a financial snag smoothing itself out thanks to HRH’s willingness to do some freelance reno work over the his vacation. It’s astonishing how much better we feel with bills paid and a full pantry.

We also joined the other local coven of our tradition in a Solstice celebration. True to our experience of the gods loving irony, it started to rain as soon as the celebrant invoked the Sun God. Fortunately, we’d gone out that morning and bought a 9’x9′ awning for the back porch, something we’ve wanted to do for a while, so we all sat there and did the ritual anyway. And when it was over and the celebrant spoke a thank you for the Sun God’s presence, the rain stopped and the sun came out. It’s a good thing our trad formally recognises laughter in circle. Then we all had an excellent, excellent barbecue, and I had the great satisfaction of making a salad with ingredients mainly pulled from the garden. The boy woke up from his nap and joined us for the last half-hour, munching happily on hot dogs and showing off his new Wall*E figure.

When everyone had gone home and the boy decided to go inside to play, I asked him if he wanted to watch a new movie and he was very interested. So I put my new The Sound of Music DVD on (hurrah for gift cards), and he watched attentively through the opening scenery shots, whispering, “Do you hear that?” when the wind picked up. He was entranced by the swell of music and Maria running through the grass. “She is happy!” he said. “She is running, and singing!” And he kept watching, asking questions now and again, and I’d explain what people were doing. (Upon seeing the nuns in church, he whispered, “Do they talk?”. “Not in church,” I whispered back. “They do talk!” he said, beaming, when the scene in the courtyard started.) Once in a while his attention would wander during longer stretches of dialogue and he’d start playing with his trains or Wall*E, but whenever someone began to sing his eyes would snap back to the screen and he would be still. After the “Do-Re-Mi” sequence (also riveting for him, partially due to the children, partially due to the music, and partially due to the many different architectural and decorative details in Salzburg) I thought I heard him humming ascending three-note phrases while he played but I dismissed it.

Then we reached “The Lonely Goatherd” sequence and as the opening music played I said, “Liam, I think you may recognise this.” He’d already recognised it on the CD earlier in the week. And when Julie Andrews began singing he said with great delight, “This is the Muppets song!” (Episode 217, of course, is where he first encountered Andrews and this particular song. I love the Muppets in general, but the delicious irony of having Andrews sing “The Lonely Goatherd” with a bunch of puppets is positively exquisite.)

He sat in front of the screen and watched raptly. When the sequence was over he said, “Can we watch it again?” So we did. And a third time, too. He mumbled something under his breath at one point, but we didn’t catch it. It wasn’t until we said that we really needed to watch the next song that he let the film continue. He watched “Edelweiss,” which wasn’t as visually fascinating but nonetheless familiar to him, being one of the lullabies I used to sing to him when he was very small, and then started playing with his Wall*E again, moving it along the back of the chesterfield.

And then we heard it clearly: he was singing “oh-de-lay-lee, oh-de-lay-lee, oh-de-lay-lee-ooh,” and making Wall*E dance.

I looked at HRH, and HRH looked at me: we both had idiotic smiles on our faces, trying not to laugh. “Your heart must be ready to burst out of your chest,” said HRH, “judging by what mine’s doing.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said.

“You’re so blogging this, aren’t you,” he said.

“With great delight,” I said.

We also heard him do a rough approximation of the beginning of “Edelweiss” too before the ballroom scene, by which point he was on HRH’s lap. “I need my cello!” he exclaimed upon seeing the chamber orchestra, so I got it for him and he played it (matching the rhythm quite well, too) before he strummed the lowest string so enthusiastically that it slipped off the bridge, so I put it away.

And, irony of ironies, I stopped the film at the wedding because it was past his bedtime.

I wonder how long it will be before he asks to watch it again.

In Which She Muses Upon The Importance Of Contrasting Musical Approaches

We had a guest conductor in to handle the first half of Wednesday’s rehearsal, as our conductor was off at his own retirement dinner. (Or I may have misunderstood and it was someone else’s retirement. Whatever: he was not there, being otherwise engaged in dining to celebrate someone’s retirement.) The guest conductor’s first name was Peter, although I missed his last name.

He was brilliant.

We worked on the 32nd symphony, and he was fantastic. He had us really work on the musicality of the piece, asking for different sounds, talking about how the parts worked with/against one another, how the dynamics were crucial. He was a violinist, and so now and again he’d grab his violin and demonstrate the sounds or the phrasing he was looking for. He used simile, metaphor, and humour to get us to understand how to produce the sounds he was asking us to do. (He told the celli we sounded like a nail gun at one point, and although we all laughed we knew exactly what he meant, and proceeded to shape the repeated eighth notes in a particular cycle as he requested.) And it worked, it all worked. He had us sounding tight and focused and blended. Ultimately, what he had us work on was the emotion of the piece, something that’s hard to focus on by yourself in a large ensemble. The first half of the evening flew by until he suddenly looked at the time and said we had to stop. The orchestra broke into spontaneous applause for him, and the first question asked was, “Where do you conduct?” He admitted that he didn’t, but that he did coach.

Now, none of this implies that our regular maestro isn’t a good conductor: Douglas has done fabulous things for us in the past five years, introducing new styles of music, broadening our scope, and pulling a new sound out of us. What Wednesday night demonstrated to me was that having a fresh leader and a different spin on the music made us think about how we play it in a different way. It’s kind of like how running your writing past a fresh set of eyes helps you understand it differently. I wonder what having a guest conductor in a rehearsal now and again on a regular basis would do for us. By addressing different details, Peter gave us a new understanding of the piece, and I really hope we can carry it over to the other pieces we play. It’s not enough to just play what’s there; we have to give it personality as well. We’ve been trying to focus interpretation in our section by emphasizing certain things, making repeated phrases after the second time, leaning on certain beats and so forth, but we can’t make it happen everywhere. There was a complaint in our section that our principal was complicating the music and we should just stick to what was written down, but there’s so much missing if you just follow the bare notes. Interpretation and style are crucial. I’m glad Peter demonstrated that the entire orchestra could do it, and make the music sound extraordinary.

Our principal had to leave at the break; I won’t see her again until next fall. Simply sitting next to her has helped me so much this past season. It meant that in the second half I sat alone, and I have been very bad and not learned the principal’s solo in the My Fair Lady medley, so when it was suddenly there I stalled. Fortunately the man who sits behind the principal played through it, and I gave him a grateful smile. Everything else I handled pretty well, except the transition into “Edelweiss” in the Sound of Music medley, where the celli have the theme, and all of us stumbled. The transitions are nasty things in medleys; usually the key and the beat both change, and you have to go right into it. And for some reason my fingerings weren’t intuitive for me. I mean, they are intuitive in that if I remember where I have to go they work, but if I blank and just stare at the number (as I did Wednesday night) I’m lost. I’m thankful I’d reviewed all the musicals over the week at home (shock, surprise! I actually had time to practice!), otherwise I’d have really disgraced myself. I managed to be the only cello to carry on in a couple of odd places, too. Go me.

Three more rehearsals — next Wednesday, an extra one next Friday night, the dress the following Monday — and then the concert on the Tuesday. And then no orchestra until September again. This season has flown by. I’ll miss it a lot.

A Look At The Non-Fiction Writing Process

Specifically the writing of a technical book, but it has lots and lots and lots in common with writing any kind of non-fic book.

What is it like to write a technical book?

It goes into detail regarding the author’s experience scheduling, outlining, editing, working with reviewers and co-authors, losing track of info that’s in there somewhere, the staggering amount of time that goes into it (no, don’t work out the per-hour breakdown of your flat fee, it will make you weep), and other associated issues.

Among them are these phrases, which resonated with me:

There’s a non-linear relationship between pages and work […]. Do you have a quiet place completely free from interruptions where you can work? Don’t be surprised if you lose 15 or 30 minutes of flow every time you’re interrupted. That seems like a lot, but if you’re keeping a lot of stuff in your mental workspace, and someone calls or pops in to ask if you can help them with something, you might find yourself becoming extremely irritable and impatient — I do anyway — and that feeling itself is as much of a productivity killer as the interruption.

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.