An update of creative life: Over my European travels (which I’ll come to), and since I’ve been home, novel writing has continued. I am currently hovering around three quarters through Part Two [of three parts]. After hording the manuscript in secret and allowing no eyes to touch upon it, I bit the proverbial bullet an have showed Part One to various critics. These folks were chosen because they had been relatively ruthless in earlier criticism of other work. So it was encouraging that their feedback was very positive. Novel writing is quite frightening compared with other sorts of creative work. The marathon scale of it is a double edged sword. On the one hand, you can succeed immensely, but on the other, one can fail enormously. Personally, I’ve found the experience a cyclic round between long, morose periods of self-doubt, and ten-minute oases of jubilation. However, I’ve been working very consistently. Every morning, I’m up to tinker and scribe. I am hopeful that the manuscript will be finished by the end of the year.
In musical news: Winter People have started working with a management company called Hub, (still under the auspices of our original manager, Jaclyn H). Its quite exciting, I consider it a significant opportunity to raise the level of the band by a number of rungs; however, I suppose I’ve always been very aware of the yawning abyss between Potentiality and Actuality. Nonetheless: we are busy recording a follow-up EP to The Dog Years. Which is moving along at a satisfactory pace. I am hoping that I won’t become so maddeningly over-involved with the mixing stage of this recording. Certainly, my auditory understanding has a made a quantum leap or two since recording/mixing The Dog Years. In further musical news, I Like Cats finished recording/mixing at BJB Studios. Still waiting on the masters from that.
Final Musical News: I’ve begun a new set of piano works. These are to be a second generation of the 12 preludes I wrote when I first started playing. I’m hoping to get out twenty-four this time, one for each of the keys (yes, even the major keys!). To this end, I’ve been hard at work transcribing a Prelude in F Major. To describe the experience: Have you ever tried to write with your bad hand? Its really difficult, cumbersome and requires immense concentration, and in the end all you produce is a toddler-like mangle of script. I am persisting however, and slowly, slowly, the system is becoming more natural to me. My intention is to compose and notate the pieces, and then record a proper pianist playing them.
Visual Artistic Endeavors: As always I continue to sketch and draw, but these pursuits have been relegated to third-place bronze until/if my major prose and musical projects can be signed off on. I have generated a number of designs for paintings, for that mythic future time when the novel is finished, and a Winter People album (post EP II) is actually done and dusted; which is probably a good thing, since my grasp of what I want to achieve in the paintings are being constantly refined.
So yes, if I ever doubted it was possible, I have more simultaneous goings-ons than ever before (did I mention I’m in my last year of University still?) – but against all good reason, I remain optimistic! I intend this year, to be my year of fruition. And now, I realize I never made it to a description of my European Odyssey in this posting, oh well, something for another time.
