I avoided my novel yesterday and sat down to do some serious book research, which consisted of going through two novels with an orange highlighter, a pencil, and a pad of sticky notes. Now I can press onwards, confident, using these texts to inspire my protagonist as she makes connections between these novels and the world around her.

That’s why my word count hasn’t budged. That, and practicing, and orchestra.

I’ve had better nights, but I’ve had worse nights, too. Two of our best cellists were missing, so Walter and I were struggling to fill in sound-wise and technique-wise, with our last two cellists alternately playing the bass part (which really threw me off a lot) and attempting the cello line. For some reason I didn’t move up to sit with Walter in the first chair (actually I know exactly what the reason was, it was avoidance of being close to the conductor for the Handel and the Mendelssohn disasters I foresaw looming), so both he and I sat alone, one behind the other, which meant we both felt unsupported because we couldn’t hear anyone else’s line to lend us psychological support. Next week I’ve promised to sit up front with him.

There were good parts (namely the bits I really, really practiced) and bad parts (the bits I practiced but became severely thrown off by the presence of the rest of the orchestra as we passed around the fugue theme of the Handel at breakneck speed). I’m really going to have to buckle down and do some serious work on these pieces in the next week or so. I don’t feel tremendously defeated, however, because there are some bits I can play that no one else can. So you see, I’m not a complete failure, which is a blessed relief, trust me. I still can’t get into the music, though; I’m finding it very difficult to create any sort of positive emotional attachment to it. I’m rather neutral about it all, which bothers me. Music is a very emotional art for me, and if a piece doesn’t make me feel something, I’m going to have difficulty playing it. Technical difficulty is a seperate negative stumbling block for these pieces.

This afternoon I’m going to do a couple of hours of freelance work, then I’ll novelise for a while. Can’t have my fingers losing flexibility, or my creative juices drying up, now, can I? (I believe I used the phrase ‘drooling language all over the page’ in encouragement to a fellow NaNoWriMo, and you know, it’s quite the apt metaphor…)