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Filling the well
Oct. 2nd, 2008 08:42 amI haven't written a lot this week, although I've been fiddling with the outline for the WIP. I've got to lay it all out on the table along with the draft thus far and do some longhand work, I think. I need that physical interaction with the words when I'm building the plot--there's something kinetic I need to make it work. But in the meantime, I've been filling the well, which you really have to do to keep feeling creative. I do, anyway.
First, there are the books! I can't say how lovely it is to read book after book with no effort. I read The Time Thief (Linda Archer Buckley), Savvy (Ingrid Law), and Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, by Jessica Day George all in a row. All so different, all so satisfying.
Then there's the living room/ballroom/art gallery. I still haven't found any furniture for that room, but we're not used to having two living spaces, anyhow, so it's not like we miss that room. So far I've been building off of the curtain the landlord put up, and it's being very fun to have a room where I can just play with the decorating. So far we've got three large, poster-size photos of Germany that we took, a Kandinsky print, a Magritte print (the one with the woman on the horse), an original drawing of Albrecht Duerer's house by someone in Nuernberg, a painting I did of my older boys, a print by the Gullah artist Jonathan Green (no relation), a leaf of a medieval manuscript, a page from a catalog that is a copy of a manuscript page, and a cross-stitch (my one and only) of Rainbow Row, a street in Charleston. Also the curtain to block off the boys' room. It's very fun to go through art!
And then there's the music. I've been asked to play the piano at church because for some reason nobody does. I can't figure out how that is possible in a town/congregation of this size, but it is. They said I could just play the piano, but there is an organ, and really, it would sound better. So I dusted off my old organ book my dad sent me and went up there last night. They told me no one would be in the chapel although other things go on Wednesday nights (my boys were at scouts, for example). Uh, right. So I get there and these teenage boys all come in and start vacuuming--the whole hour! And every five minutes some other random person would walk in and come all the way up to where I was to comment on the new upholstery of some of the chairs to me. It's a good thing I've gotten over any sense of making a fool of myself, because otherwise I couldn't have practiced. And I do need to practice! I took organ lessons in high school from the manager of the largest funeral home in town. Sometimes he had to cancel because of a funeral, and always he drove a hearse to my lessons. (If you know anything about my WIP, you may see connection here...) Anyway, that was a lifetime ago. Somehow I remembered this organ book as easier. It's not. Sure, I play a keyboard instrument, but playing the organ requires a lot more finger independence. I would normally bundle notes in a chord in my mind, but now I have to think about them separately. The best way to explain is to compare it to using a regular computer keyboard and then learning to use one of those split-style ergonomic ones. It does weird things to the brain. I think I can fake playing the organ on Sundays, but in the meantime, I plan to learn it for real as well. So despite the audience yesterday, it was fun.
First, there are the books! I can't say how lovely it is to read book after book with no effort. I read The Time Thief (Linda Archer Buckley), Savvy (Ingrid Law), and Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, by Jessica Day George all in a row. All so different, all so satisfying.
Then there's the living room/ballroom/art gallery. I still haven't found any furniture for that room, but we're not used to having two living spaces, anyhow, so it's not like we miss that room. So far I've been building off of the curtain the landlord put up, and it's being very fun to have a room where I can just play with the decorating. So far we've got three large, poster-size photos of Germany that we took, a Kandinsky print, a Magritte print (the one with the woman on the horse), an original drawing of Albrecht Duerer's house by someone in Nuernberg, a painting I did of my older boys, a print by the Gullah artist Jonathan Green (no relation), a leaf of a medieval manuscript, a page from a catalog that is a copy of a manuscript page, and a cross-stitch (my one and only) of Rainbow Row, a street in Charleston. Also the curtain to block off the boys' room. It's very fun to go through art!
And then there's the music. I've been asked to play the piano at church because for some reason nobody does. I can't figure out how that is possible in a town/congregation of this size, but it is. They said I could just play the piano, but there is an organ, and really, it would sound better. So I dusted off my old organ book my dad sent me and went up there last night. They told me no one would be in the chapel although other things go on Wednesday nights (my boys were at scouts, for example). Uh, right. So I get there and these teenage boys all come in and start vacuuming--the whole hour! And every five minutes some other random person would walk in and come all the way up to where I was to comment on the new upholstery of some of the chairs to me. It's a good thing I've gotten over any sense of making a fool of myself, because otherwise I couldn't have practiced. And I do need to practice! I took organ lessons in high school from the manager of the largest funeral home in town. Sometimes he had to cancel because of a funeral, and always he drove a hearse to my lessons. (If you know anything about my WIP, you may see connection here...) Anyway, that was a lifetime ago. Somehow I remembered this organ book as easier. It's not. Sure, I play a keyboard instrument, but playing the organ requires a lot more finger independence. I would normally bundle notes in a chord in my mind, but now I have to think about them separately. The best way to explain is to compare it to using a regular computer keyboard and then learning to use one of those split-style ergonomic ones. It does weird things to the brain. I think I can fake playing the organ on Sundays, but in the meantime, I plan to learn it for real as well. So despite the audience yesterday, it was fun.
