Saturday Summary, May 7, 2011

Every Saturday, The Creative will feature a brief post about my current creative efforts and how they are progressing. If this doesn't interest you, read no further -- not only will I not be offended, I'll never know. 

It's that time again, and despite the fact that I've been busy on creative projects all week, I don't really have that much to show for it.  It was another of those weeks that move me farther along the path, even if I didn't actually reach any way stations.

Music -- My main project here was finishing and submitting a handbell piece for a contest entry.  I won't say any more until the results are announced, but I'm still going to count it as one of my pieces for the year, so I'm up to 4 bell pieces and 3 piano arrangements on the year.  The good news is, I'm gearing up to get into some hot-and-heavy composing, so those numbers should hopefully start going up quickly, and the ones in the table below (the table of how many pieces I want to write this year) will hopefully start going down just as fast:

• Handbell pieces -- 20  16
• Piano pieces -- 20  17
• Choral pieces -10
• String pieces -- 4
• Band pieces -- 2
• Other instrumental pieces -- 4
• GRAND TOTAL FOR 2011 -- 60  52

Writing -- The lion's share of my time this week was spent looking at my proof copy of The Coming of the Heroes from CreateSpace.  After submitting the files, finding out there were problems, fixing some things, resubmitting the files, then finding out there were still problems but I could proceed anyway, I decided to proceed.  I received the proof copy of the book and it looks really nice.  It just frightens me how nice some of these print-on-demand publishers can make a book look, and the cost isn't astronomical.

Of course I went over this proof just as thoroughly as I would a music proof, but being a 300-page book, it naturally took longer.  I found a few mistakes to correct, a few things I wanted to be different, and have resubmitted the files.  The just re-approved them this morning, so I'm ordering a proof of this version, which ought to arrive here early next week.  Once it does, I'll look it over and, God willing, will see no mistakes.  If that's the case, then I click a button and unleash The Sadonian Chronicles to the world.  Rest assured that when the book is available, you'll hear all about it here on The Creative.

Publishing -- Oddly, it was a very, very quiet week on this front.  I did sign a contract for my Three Carols for Intermediate Violin and Piano with Latham, but otherwise, nothing really happened on the publishing front.  Of course, as I look at my spreadsheet and see how little I have out there for consideration right now, it's not surprising.  When my composing picks up in the next week or two and I start submitting things again, I fully expect things to start happening in this category, as well.


That's all from here.  I've got a busy day of errands to run and, just maybe, music to compose.  Until then, have a great week, and keep on creating!  We'll see you Wednesday.