So I recently passed the 100-page barrier on my novel. It took a long time to get there, but I think I'm in a good groove, now. I am hoping to have an entire draft done by April. Of course, Spring Break might get in my way ( Read more... )

What I have so far:
-A design doc.
-Character sketches
-A working title (Orignal: Go, little novelist, go! Current: Ostriches and Outlaws)

AND

-A completed first chapter.

The typical unfinished novel is 120 pgs. So I'm not jumping up and down yet. But still.

Yes, I would like to hitchhike through the galaxy, braving even Vogon poetry.
Yes, I am saying so long to this paltry blog. Because
Yes, I finally am writing a novel.

For a young couple. Not hip, urban names. But not stodgy, tired names, either. Unique ( Read more... )

I can't tell whether or not I'm using the piano to avoid writing. I can tell that I'm too susceptible to guilt. But it's like this: I love the piano; I don't always love writing. Piano (most of the time) is easy; writing is hard. So, the guilt. About taking the easy path. If it's hard and sometimes miserable, it must be better for me, right? And ( Read more... )

2 hours along the Kansas highway yields:

-1 blue heron
-1 turkey
-3 fields burning
-1 depot museum
-dozens of hawks

While my husband is at Hap Kido, I am secretly scarfing down his butter chicken, ordered last night from Paradise India. Menu Description: From heartland of Punjab, Pieces of marinated white chicken cooked in tomato based sauce and butter. Oh, the deceptive blandness of that description of the sauce. It is glorious. I'm pouring it onto basmati rice ( Read more... )

I've been rehearsing a piece of music called "Sonata for Piccolo and Piano" by John La Montaine. I hated it at first - not so much because it's modern but because it involves a piccolo. But being paid to play tops hating a piece so I took it on. It took a few days to really understand the piece, muscially speaking. It's got 25+ time signature ( Read more... )

I'm reading On Piano Playing, by Abby Whiteside (1881 - 1956). She wrote this amazing piano pedagogy book when she was this little old woman with a white bun on her head and grandma glasses on her face. It's a useful book - and so funny I was giggling in public, a thing I'm not prone to doing. My favorite gems (though it may be you have to be a ( Read more... )

I was playing Chopin this morning - second Nocturne - and could not help but becoming nostalgic. What exactly for, I don't know. But I'm certain it's Chopin's fault. His music leads the brain into a sentimental melancholy, a beautiful loneliness, so that all the paths I didn't take, lives I didn't live, spread out behind me in a waltzing mist. ( Read more... )