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.