Paksworld

Time drifted away while other stuff happened…this was the week of going off to another online venue my editor had suggested I look into, arguing with a cranky computer, trying to get my Messiah score marked (director’s markings were online.  Computer didn’t want to go online, or stay online.  So every trip out to the new venue, and the site for the score-markings, and to the blogs to toss away the spam comments, was a lengthy adventure. )

Meanwhile, the work sessions on K-III are not going swimmingly and I figured out last night what the problem was.  It’s interesting, in the way that the writing life and the non-writing life sometimes do not dovetail, but smash into each other like bricks and one breaks.   I’m in serious rehearsal now for the Messiah performance.  I need to be listening to Messiah CDs, both the section rehearsal CD and the full-speed orchestral CD.  We’re doing a chorus we didn’t do last year, that I’ve sung, but not recently.  I had left the Messiah performance CD on while writing…but didn’t realize (DUH) that when also really rehearsing for it I can’t use it as background music to set the rhythm/mood/etc.   The music part of my brain, instead of being massaged into sending useful signals to the language part, instead snatches the language part and tells it to read the score.   So instead of, for instance, being able to visualize what Dorrin’s riding into, or Arcolin’s conversation with the exiled gnomes, or a particular swordfight…what I have in my head is a page of score with David’s marks all over it and the music I’m hearing drags me along so I notice that the choir on the CD is legato on a phrase that David has made marcato.    Trying to work with no music meant I was generating it in my head, all of it, score and marks and music, with no processing power left over for writing fiction.

Given the other craziness of the week, I didn’t notice that was going on until last night.  I feel really stupid about that, but…I’m barely 1000 words ahead of where I was last time.   And next week is Thanksgiving–and “not ready” is a mild, mild description of where the house and larder are.   (And we have a three-hour Messiah rehearsal Monday night, so counting travel time that’s at least five hours out of the day.  More if my lesson overlaps.)

You might wonder why a writer gets involved in lengthy, time-consuming, energy-eating outside activities, but in fact many of us find it necessary.  Not just to prevent physical symptoms, but for the benefit of the books themselves.   The trick, as with riding a horse, is balance.    (And breathing, and fitness, and…no, wait, that’s a rhythm out of Messiah.  See what I mean?)

I’m thinking maybe Beethoven or Rachmaninoff  would displace Messiah long enough to get some writing done, but on the other hand the living room floor is mostly piles of books and papers, and Richard has dug out all the books that were solidifying like stalagmites around his desk–a pile several feet tall, all sizes and shapes.   In less than seven days people will be arriving and they will expect…well, not a perfect house,  because I don’t get to that ever, but a place to sit, maybe.  A place to walk without difficulty.   So I will put on something non-Messiah-ish but not sit here to listen to it.  I think.  Maybe.