Against my expectations, it's been a productive week on the creativity front. I'm about a quarter of the way through on the current rewrite of the second novel in my series, I've submitted another piece (The Boar's Head Carol, which I sent to Bill Griffin at Beckenhorst), and I heard back from Tammy Waldrop at Alfred on my Pat-a-pan: She can't fit it in her line up for next year as-is, so instead we've shortened my Hark the Herald Angels Sing a little and are going to put both pieces in a single folio, sort of a two-for-just-a-little-more-than-the-price-of-one deal. That Pat-a-pan is a simplified version of an arrangement I made for our choir at church six or seven years ago, and I still have some ideas for some more complex (the Alfred arrangement is level 1) things I'd like to do with the piece, so I'll probably revisit the tune at some point under a different name, but that'll be a few years down the line. I've got enough other projects to keep me occupied.
With the submission of Boar's Head, that puts me one away from my Year of Insanity goal. I'd like to get a couple more piano arrangements done so I can submit a batch, so I hope to get that done this next week.
***4:21 pm update: Just heard back from Bill Griffin, and Boar's Head will be in the Beckenhorst Press Fall 2011 releases, which should be available sometime in May or June 2011.***
As for today, I'm trying to write a synopsis of the first book in my series, The Coming of the Heroes. I have an agency in mind I want to submit it to, but they, like all agencies and publishers, want a synopsis. This is the part of writing I dread. Submitting music is easy: submit the piece, give the publisher an email so they know who you are and what you're sending them, then leave them alone. I don't need to boil the piece down to a condensed form (what would I say, anyway? "It starts in the tonic, then drifts to the dominant before coming back to the tonic once more. A rollicking good time!"). I also submit the whole thing, not just the first bit. With novels, it's usually the first two or three chapters. That would be like submitting a handbell manuscript by giving them the first sixteen bars, and hope from there they'd like the rest of it.
But if I'm ever going to get these books published, I have to get them out there, and the synopsis is the necessary evil I have to surmount before I can do that. Besides, if this blog is changing over to being dedicated to creativity and not just composing, then struggles like this are important, if for no other reason than I can share my experiences with those other publication-seeking souls out there.
So I'm going to stop procrastinating right now and get to work. Any of you wasting your time by reading this blog, I'd encourage you to do the same.
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