One Month to Go

Here it is, June 30, and there's but one month left in the Year of Insanity, the experiment I started last August 1 to try to write four new pieces a month. I just finished up a 2-3 octave handbell arrangement of Pat-a-pan that I sent off to Tammy Waldrop at Alfred, so that brings my total up to 45.  If I can get three pieces finished in the next month, I'll have met the year-long goal.  (Of course, if I can get seven done, it'll come out to an average of a piece a week, so that would be nice, too.)

I actually took a bit of a composing hiatus last week to work a bit on some writing.  I've been working on a young adult fantasy series for the better part of a decade, and I still only have the first book finished and in a presentable form (I really must get it out for submission, but submitting writing is much more complicated than submitting music, sorry to say).  I have the rough draft of the second book done and have for a while, but it just needed editing and fixing, so I spent some time last week working on that.  The first three chapters are now in presentable form, but the remaining 90% of the book ... well ... aren't.  I hope to keep devoting time to fixing that up as the summer progresses, and possibly by the end of summer have a version I'm happy enough with to share with others. 

Through all that, I'm still trying to find the time to compose and arrange.  The problem is really a catch-22: to compose and arrange and write, I need time.  With summer off, I have vast swaths of free time at my disposal.  The problem is, with that much free time staring me in my face, it makes it very easy to put off working for an hour, or three hours, or a day, because there's plenty of time left in the summer.  I need free time to get the work done I want to get done, but once that free time is here, so much of it makes it hard to work.

Procrastination and I are having daily -- and sometimes hourly -- chats.

I'm reading the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (re-reading it, if you want to get technical), and it's all about how artists (which includes artists, writers, musicians, even entrepreneurs) really have to declare war on their art and fight to do it, because if we don't, then resistance and procrastination will keep us from ever doing what we know needs to be done.  I've read countless other books about being creative, usually about writing, and to a one, they all say the hardest part of writing (though it's true for any other creative pursuit) is sitting down and starting -- once you've done that, the work will come, and usually fairly easily (wow, triple adverb ... maybe I need to reread those writing books again...).  The same is true for me, and I realize it the more I create.  Pat-a-pan, which I just submitted today, only took two days or so to finish up, so it wasn't a long drawn-out piece.  I probably worked on it in five or six shorter stints of time, and every time, it was a struggle to just open Finale, open the file, and get to work.  Once I got going, the notes came just fine, but just starting off was a total pain. 

So that's the update from here.  The creating continues, the war rages on, and I've got thirty-one more days to write three pieces and thus reach my goal for the Year of Insanity.