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 was the first week back to school. As exciting (and tiring) as that was, it got me out of my regular creative groove. I'm still in the process of finding that groove again, so my creative output this week was less than stellar. Still, in the interests of consistency, here's the Summary for this week:
Music -- First, some exciting news: since it's up on their website, I think I can now safely announce that I will be the guest conductor for the Capital Area Young Ringers Festival in Raleigh, NC this February. If you're a young ringer and live somewhere in the Raleigh area, I invite you to check out the event information at rr.org and think about attending. It should be a fantastic day!
I did get a bit of composing done this week on a special project I'm not going to say much about at this time. Suffice it to say it's a fun piece that I hope is one I'll get to share with everyone in the next year or two.
Other than that, I didn't get much done. I had a few ideas for things (including the piece I'm writing for the Young Ringers Festival) but nothing I actually put down on paper.
Writing -- I did receive copies of this draft of Fealty and Fire, and have distributed four of them to my First Readers. I'm now waiting for their comments (a painful process, both the waiting and the sitting through their comments, but both very necessary) and will then start getting this thing closer to completion.
Publishing -- It was a fairly well-balanced week, as I had two choral numbers rejected a couple of days before I had my handbell arrangement of Dormi, Dormi, O Bel Bambin accepted by GIA Publications. That marks my second acceptance with them, and my 55th accepted handbell piece (though my 62nd accepted handbell title, if you count the individual parts of multi-piece sets). Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about the whole thing.
That's it from here. I've got a good day of creating ahead of me here, and I'm hopeful I can get back into a regular school-year creating rhythm this next week. Now that all the beginning-of-year things are starting to sort themselves out, things ought to settle down into a regular rhythm, and I hope to capitalize on that. Until then, have a great week, and we'll see you back here on Wednesday.
You're at 55? Crud, I'm only at 62 (~80 including parts of collections). Need to work harder to stay ahead of you...
ReplyDeleteGuess I better pick up my pace then, too. :)
ReplyDeleteThat always drives me crazy -- do I count the published "titles", or do I count the individual parts? I had to work three times as hard on a piece that has three separate songs all jammed into one cover, so shouldn't that count as three? Yeah, just don't know.
I didn't include anything non-handbell, either. I've been doing a fair bit of that lately (piano and string orchestra), so if you stick with handbell pieces, you ought to pull away again in the near future. Don't worry, though -- I'll keep you in my sights. :)
To add to the confusion: I have a collection with Hope that has 10 hymn introductions and 10 hymn accompaniment parts. Do I count that as 20? 10? 1? I really don't know either, but for whatever reason I'm counting everything under one cover as a single work, be it 32 measures or a 26-minute, 12 movement piece. There's no real rationale for this except simplicity, but sometimes simplicity wins the battle.
ReplyDeleteI have ~10 choral, percussion ens., etc. works submitted to publishers, but because I've just started branching out in that direction, none have been accepted yet. (Or at least that's the line I tell myself.)
Yeah, there's no good way to count things sometimes. I guess as long as I'm still submitting and getting the occasional piece accepted, I'm moving in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping to branch out into band soon, and I've got a couple choral submitted, but I just don't have the luck with choral I do with instrumental. Good luck on your choral and percussion pieces -- I'll be hoping for good news for you!