In which Connie blots her copybook
Jenny is away for twelve days so I rang up Other Rider and we negotiated for extra Connie days. My first out of order day was Friday* and as I was tacking up Connie, so was Susanna, two stable doors down, saddling Jenny’s gorgeous old retired show jumper Drambuie.** I hadn’t met Susanna before and haven’t seen Drambuie stripped and ready for action since I’ve been back at Jenny’s yard: usually when I come in for Connie he’s hanging over his stall door with his ears flopping and his lower lip hanging, trying to look old and sleepy. He doesn’t do it very well.
I was feeling short of time (when am I ever not feeling short of time) so I’d been planning to school Connie–you can inflict the same amount of exercise in about half the time in a schooling ring. But Liz, who I’ve been out hacking with several times, just the two of us, said that Susanna and Drambuie and she and Caprice and Beth and Rocket–who is much too small for her, but he’s one of those members-of-the-family ponies–were going out, and would I like to come along? I am still learning good horse-trails around here–I have trouble readjusting from my knowledge of hellhound walks; you can cover more ground on a horse, but you can’t lift one over an impassable stile–and it would be nice to get to know a few more members of Jane’s yard.*** So I said yes, thank you.
Susanna is the local geography expert; she knows the horse trails like I know the dog trails. She naturally went in front–and Drambuie has a ground-devouring walk, although Connie is no slouch. I need to emphasise here that I was not expecting trouble. And when Drambuie took violent exception to a bicycle lying by the side of the road† I offered a lead, having a well-established faith in my horse’s manners. (At this point the man belonging to the bicycle turned up and removed the offending object. Connie, who, as I’ve said, does shy, shied at the place the bicycle had been. She’d obviously been paying attention.)
She was a little on the alert as we followed Drambuie up the hill to the ridge, where we could speed up a bit, but she often goes into power mode out on a hack and I still wasn’t expecting trouble. I wasn’t expecting trouble when we got to the top of the ridge and trotted, and she was trying to lug my arms out of my shoulder joints. At that point we were still narrowly in control.
Then we went through a gate and out into a big field.†† It’s harvest already–how did it get so late in the year so early?–and we’re into one of those brief, exhilarating spoilt-for-choice seasons of cross country galloping. And this year I have a horse to ride. This field had been recently cut, and seemed, as you sat your prancing steed, to reach out forever in all directions. At that point ‘forever’ still looked like fun. Drambuie set off obediently at the trot, while Connie surged into canter immediately, but I don’t always make a fuss about this; horses are allowed to get excited so long as they remain, you know, responsive to rider’s aids. . . .
But when Drambuie slid smoothly into the long, countryside-devouring canter you’d expect both from his walk and his conformation, I found myself aboard a raving lunatic. Her canter turned into a mad frothing flaming-eyed gallop, and she was going to go in front, she was not going to hang around looking at anybody’s heels. Gods almighty. My perfect horse. Whoops.
Well, she did not go in front, and we continued at Drambuie’s heels–actually we crept up to his stirrup leathers once, and I glanced across at him lolloping along on the lightest contact, and tried not to grind my teeth–but that’s a several-minute-length field and it was a very long several minutes. I simply wasn’t having any, and Connie, I think, couldn’t believe she wasn’t going to get her own way: after this was all over, Liz said that Other Rider can’t hold her when she gets like this and that Liz has had some extremely rapid hacks in her company when Connie has decided (sometimes, evidently, without the aggravation of a pair of heels in front of her) that galloping is the order of the day. I’ve wondered about this–I’ve never had trouble stopping her (before) but her assumption that we were going to gallop has occasionally been a trifle suspicious.
Meanwhile . . . we’re maybe halfway down a very long field at what might politely be called a bounding canter and my horse is beginning to notice that I’m still arguing with her. Frenzy. At this point the bounding becomes more of a pogo stick effect because she’s now bucking every damn stride. Note that this is the horse Jenny guaranteed did not buck.††† And no, I did not have her in a stranglehold; I’ve been genuinely bolted with–which this wasn’t, quite–and that only makes it worse. You let the wretched animal have as much rein as you dare, and try to remind it of its responsibilities. To give Connie what credit she is due, she wasn’t trying to get her head down to buck me off, she was just Expressing Frustration. And every time she came down she came down on a different lead–I had never realised there are sixteen available leads, four per leg–and on a few notable occasions she came down one lead in front and another one behind. That’s a particularly comfortable gait. As it was by the time we reached the other end of the field I was probably two inches shorter, from having had my spine compressed and driven up some way into my skull. Arrrrrrgh.
Liz and Beth had evidently been much entertained by our performance. Liz also knew that Connie was a guaranteed buck-free zone and since her Caprice is, well, capricious, she may have been enjoying it very much indeed. Susanna was horrified–I should have shouted at her to slow down–I don’t want to be the wet blanket! But we didn’t canter again after that–sigh. The next big field we came to, we trotted. Which is to say Drambuie, Caprice and Rocket trotted, and Connie and I got farther and farther and farther behind because every time I asked her to trot she went instantly into canter. No. Walk. Now we’ll try that again. She was finally beginning to listen to me by the end of that field–which is to say she’s still the Connie we know and love, she’s just been allowed to err into wicked ways. Another horse suffering this level of unexpected frustration could have gone into meltdown, and equine meltdown is the thing that makes me want to take up knitting. But Other Rider needs to learn to ring bells so she can negotiate gaits with Connie a little more effectively. Even Susanna, who is a very good and experienced rider, says that Connie does get ‘very strong’.
She still wanted her carrots when we got back to the barn. Trollop. And I rode her again today–in the school this time!–and in fact we had rather a good time; I’ve been talking to a horsy friend about engagement and the maintenance of right-lead canter, which is our bugbear, and mainly what I’m learning is what most riders learn, which is that it’s all their fault. The horse will do what you arrange for it to do, so if it doesn’t do it, you’re arranging wrong. Most of today was kind of . . . messy, but we had a few moments of probably the best right-lead canter we’ve ever had. But we didn’t have any heels in front of us either. And I can’t wait for Jenny to come home, so I can tell her about her fabulous bucking mare. . . .
* * *
* which was possible because Oisin is on holiday too–my piano lessons are Friday afternoons. I started out being a good girl and working on what I should be working on . . . and then two days ago I got tired of being a good girl and I’m now resetting The Battle Hymn of the Republic as, say, Charles Ives might have done it. On a bad day. Hee hee hee hee. If I have the blog written in time I might get to the interpolation of Columbia the Gem of the Ocean tonight. Which I’m going to have to transpose first. Ick. But I’m probably feeling the need to cheer up the American side of me: McCain is way too close to Obama in the polls. For pity’s sake, after sixty-seven years of that pickled moron, the Democrats ought to have the next presidency on a plate. But that’s not how it’s going. A discordant American Battle Hymn is probably what I need right now.
** He really is gorgeous–I’ve told you about him before–chestnut thoroughbred^–sixteen and a half hands high and a depth and breadth of chest and bum that you look at twice because you think you’re imagining it. And one of those fine majestic thoroughbred heads that almost make you weep. He’s something like eighteen years old and looks half that; Jenny only retired him two or so years ago while he was still at the top of his game, because he was starting to have some arthritis in one hock and unless you are a liver fluke in human form you don’t make a top-class horse break his heart. And thoroughbreds are your original kill-yourself-trying horse.^^
^ Anyone who is paying more attention than they should to this blog will remember hearing/reading me drivelling on about my serious weakness for thoroughbreds before.
^^ I’m told they aren’t the original: they got it from their Arabian forebears. But the Arabs I’ve known have been mostly little space cases.
*** Especially one who rides Drambuie. Ahem.
† Ah, thoroughbreds. They have their little ways.
†† The rhinoceros field, to be exact. So called–by Peter and me–because it’s one of those with very misleading topography. You think it’s nearly flat, and that you can see any hazards. Wrong. That gentle little fold ahead of you can hide an entire herd of rhinoceroses, which will emerge just as you and accompanying domestic fauna move too far from the gate to make a run for it.
††† Never trust any guarantee about any horse.
Angles
I’m writing this at a funny angle.* Connie and I went through a gate this morning whose mission of access was being challenged strenuously by a half-fallen tree. Or possibly two or three half fallen trees. We’re having wind again–present karma seems to include wind on my Connie-hacking Saturday mornings, thanks soooo much guys–and quite a lot of stuff if it hasn’t fully come down has certainly slipped. And the hedgerows, especially when they’re kind of held together by rampant ivy, tend to look all pretty much of a muchness as you trot** by and it’s not till you get to the gate that ought to be there that you realise you have a problem. In this case too the gate’s on the edge of a sharp slope and as soon as your horse gets her front feet through it she’s going to plunge forward and down rather abruptly. This happened today, which manoeuvre left a modest amount of elbow, cheek and top of shoulder behind. Connie doesn’t have a mark on her, which is the important thing. I, however, look like I was in a pub brawl.*** This would probably do wonders for my street cred if I had any idea what to do with street cred.† But it has meant that I’ve had that sleeve rolled up over the top of the shoulder–I wonder if it would stay rolled up any better if I had a cigarette box to wrap it around?–and I have to carry my knapsack on the wrong side which is almost more vertiginous stress than mortal flesh (particularly damaged mortal flesh) can bear. And I look like a twit.†† And I’m typing all sort of bent over to one side.†††
I should be typing up the corrections for SUNSHINE which I want to get in on Monday to prove what a good, reliable, professional woman I am really.‡ But . . . I’m not. I can make myself miserable tomorrow. I spent most of the afternoon at the piano.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hate the Proms but every Saturday night this time of year when Peter is playing bridge and I’m not listening to an opera on Radio 3 I’m not in a good mood. Like now. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, however, which is supposed to be the First Ever Folk Music Prom. And this afternoon–while I was sweating over sticking notes on Money Spider–they had a warm-up programme about current hotties in folk music.‡‡ And there was an interesting discussion on ‘the perfect folk voice’ which so far as I can tell means ‘can’t sing.’‡‡‡ Yaay! I’m a folk singer! I’ll stop work on Money Spider immediately § and get back to Foggy Foggy Dew and Waly Waly. And Ash Grove. And one or two others. Or three. By way of Benjamin Britten. The Britten [in]Complete Folk Song settings arrived last week and I have been wallowing.§§ I keep sort of slightly changing my mind about what I think I’m doing–what do I think I’m doing? I can’t play, I can’t sing, I can compose a very, very little, and I still have this really lame idea that music is supposed to be shared? People will be paying me to stay away.§§§ However since at present rate of progress I will have learnt to play–and I say nothing of singing–Song II by my 60th birthday, and don’t you need like a repertoire before you start inflicting it on other people?–I don’t guess anybody’s wallets are going to be under undue pressure after all. Oh, I’ve had a brilliant idea. As long as I go on writing stuff that’s too hard for me to play . . . ¤
Why couldn’t I be attracted to avocations and passionate hobbies that I have some talent for?¤¤
Sigh.
But now, speaking of music, I’m going to go watch the final instalment of Dr Horrible.
* * *
* I’m lucky to be writing it at any angle. I think this computer needs a bracing visit from the Computer Man, whip and chair optional. It did not want to turn Word on. Notnotnotnotnotnotnotnot. So you’re trying to get the little hourglass doohickey that tells you that it’s listening and finally you get the hourglass thingy and then suddenly about TWELVE Document 1s spill feverishly across the bottom bar. Yesyesyesyesyesyes! I’m here! I’m awake! I’m ready for action! Er–we are! All of us! –And they don’t much want to close. Nononononononono. And then you get caught in one of these endless loops where you can’t do one thing until you do something else first–and furthermore if somehow you do do any of the things you can’t do you will overwrite the Basic Computer Template that keeps all its atoms together under your fingers as opposed to spreading out across the galaxy or mutating into lobsters or something. Meanwhile the Admonishing Bell is dinging all over the place like the crack of Miss Thing’s ruler across your knuckles when you were in second grade and got caught going to the girls’ without a hall pass. Ding! You can’t do that! Ding! Where is your Doing Whatever You’re Trying to Do Pass! You haven’t got it, have you! Ding! No, you can’t do that either because someone else is on the system! –I always particularly love that one, since while my computers can talk to each other I’m only ever the only person on this system. Except of course the Gflytch, who infiltrated me a long time ago. I wonder if they’ve figured out yet that I’m a fantasy writer, not the Pentagon? They’re probably building an anti-dragon ray back on Betelgeuse right now. Anyway. I finally shut the whole works down with a violent prod to the off key and when it came back up again it was sulking intemperately and I keep getting nasty little pop ups warning me of imminent destruction. Oh go away.
** Straight or sideways. We’re not fussy.
*** You should see the other guy! He looks great!
† Hellhounds might enjoy it. They could chase it around, play tug of war with it, joggle my arm when I’m trying to work with it, terrorise small children and little old ladies with it.
†† A twit who has been in a pub brawl
††† I’m also cold. October is visting. I am not going bell ringing like this tomorrow morning so I’ll have to figure out a way to tape it up. One-handed. Should be fun.
‡ HA HA HA HA HA HA.
‡‡ Apparently I’m the only folkie on the planet who thinks Chris Wood is boring.
‡‡‡ And all you Kate Rusbys and June Tabors and things can just give up and go home.
§ I will hell.
§§ I also said, oh, bag it, and ordered the Britten Lady Barnard and Little Musgrave, thinking, if I want to (re)arrange it anyway, it doesn’t matter if it’s for the wrong voices.
§§§ Well . . . okay. That has possibilities.
¤ I was moaning about my sight reading and Oisin has inflicted me with a Improving Your Sight Reading Book. Uggggggggggggggh.
¤¤ On the other hand, I am beginning to limp into ringing touches of Stedman Doubles. At last. I was beginning to think that Stedman touches were going to be the absolute Thing too Far for me and my wonky semi-grasp of bell ringing. Did I say this last week? I remember telling you that the two kinds of ‘singles’ (which are one of those bell-mixing-up calls, and which kind you have to ring depends on where you are in the pattern when the single is called) are nicknamed cat’s ears and coathangers. Cat’s ears are easier. I can do cat’s ears. Sort of. Coathangers . . . well, they’re more of a mountain range than a coathanger, or even several coathangers. But this Friday practise is the second time I’ve sort of lurched through them. Yaay. Lurching is good. If you can lurch you will eventually be able to saunter smoothly. Probably.
Yerk*
. . . Connie is, of course, my latest excuse for running late, at least on Tuesdays and Saturdays. And a very good excuse she is too.** Yerk. I usually eat dinner at 9:30 on bell ringing nights but the rest of the week I try . . . I used to try . . . for dinner at a slightly more civilised . . . or anyway a slightly more social . . . hour. But then given the rest of my uncivilised and unsocial hours, not to mention my personality, I think perhaps I should view a 9:30 supper as merely bringing my final meal of the day into sync with the rest of my whacked-out schedule [sic].
So after Connie I whirled home and zapped through my email*** but then incredibly it was already 3 o’clock so hellhounds and I came pelting down to the mews for lunch† and while I had dutifully brought my proofs with me, somehow I was irresistibly drawn to the piano. I’ve chosen my folk song for mangling, I mean McKinleyfying. Gypsy Rover. Hee hee hee hee hee. Woodie Guthrie or someone is spinning in his grave. I roughed it out yesterday but of course none of it is right so I’ve begun the grisly bar by bar process of rewrite: where every time you happen on a few notes in a row that you like, they don’t fit with anything else, including the last few notes in a row that you liked.
After about an hour of this my brain heads for the high country, shouting, I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!†† So at that point the hellhounds and I charged back to the cottage and I snatched up my secateurs and rushed outdoors to deadhead urgently . . . Sunday’s friend was pie-eyed from jet lag and has no garden of her own; tomorrow’s friend is a gardener. Furthermore I lost yesterday to hay fever ††† and this time of year you really have to get out there with a whip and chair on a daily basis . . . or you do the way I garden. And then I had to spend MOST of my gardening time effing watering.
And now I really really must read proofs. Must. Read. Proofs. Maybe just five minutes to see if any of the few-notes-in-a-row have gelled–or can be persuaded to have gelled–with each other, now that my brain has had a break. . . .
* * *
* Yerk: a kind of baritone eeek.
** We did half pass^ today!! I’ve never done half pass . . . well, not what you could call successfully anyway. There’s way too much to remember to do at the same time–all your various limbs and appendages are each doing something else, individually, and while they probably could, it’s the old brain that breaks down on the management function. ^^ This is obviously something Connie is good at . . . but I don’t suppose we’d be getting many ‘8’s if there was a judge looking at us either.^^^ However I regained my honour as a dweeb by totally ruining our flying changes.+ Sigh. This is the mare, you may remember, who changes leg if you so much as look in the other direction, and here I couldn’t get it when I asked. Eventually Jenny figured out that I was asking wrong: dressage style is with the horse straight–hence being able to ask for a flying change every stride if you like/dare–while the show-jumper style is with the horse very slightly bent in the direction you’re asking for the lead change toward: a show-jumper flying change is practical, it’s about being on the right leg and in the right balance for the next freaking great fence you meet. Oh, gods, I moaned, I’m confusing her. No, no, said Jenny kindly, it’s something to work on. The Positive Teacher Approach.
Someone came to look at Horse-for-sale for the second time today. Sigh. I tell myself that if Jenny sells him she’ll get someone else in who’ll be just as interesting. Which is also to say that my taste in horses is very like hers.
^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-pass There’s a video link at the bottom of the page, and if you go there you’ll be spoilt for choice.
^^ No, wait, does my elbow go in my ear, or–?
^^^ Points out of ten for each movement. If I ever came out of a dressage test with an average of 8, I’d die of delirious joy.
+ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_change I can’t get the video link to work, but there’s always: http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/competitionnews/388/258991.html Long term readers of this blog will remember that I went entirely nuts for Blue Hors Matine or however you spell her. At nearly the beginning of this test you see her from the front, apparently skipping down the middle of the long side: that’s flying changes every stride. Most of us are happy to ask for one change down the long side of a dressage ring. She also does some very nifty half pass a little farther on. But it’s her passage–that high-stepping, dancing trot–that makes me cry. If I have a Riding Goal, it’s to ride a good passage, some time before I’m so old and creaky I need a crane to get in a saddle. I wonder if Connie would like to learn passage . . .
*** Checking carefully that there wasn’t a third set of galleys/proofs about to arrive
† The hellhounds never mind late meals. I wish they minded a little more.
†† Or possibly: Yet, freedom, yet thy banner, torn but flying, Streams like the thundercloud against the wind
††† Yes, better today, thank you. I assume the acute outrage of the pollen-cloud field is wearing off, but I also finally found a homeopathic remedy that made a dent. Both the upside and the downside of homeopathy is the individuality business: you don’t just have a homeopathy remedy for hay fever, you have to find the particular remedy that suits you and your hay fever–which may not be the same as last week or last year. When you’re sneezing your brains out through your ears, it’s very difficult to concentrate on the selection process, and I started at the wrong end of the list.
Nuts
Today has been nuts even by my standards. Fridays are always nuts because I have both my piano lesson and home tower bell practise . . . and today we had a wedding to ring as well. On Friday? Don’t these people have to work for a living? Maybe they’re all free lance. The merging of two clans of free lancers . . . to produce a regiment of little javelins I suppose. They all looked normal enough. And I’m delighted to report that the bride was not strapless. There was a law passed about two years ago that all bridal gowns must be strapless, whether this suits either the bride or the weather or not. Perhaps it’s been rescinded. I’d vote for that.
The additional nutsifier at present is that the main road at the bottom of my little cul de sac is down to one lane while they rip merry hell out of the other one, for reasons unspecified. There’s a stoplight and everything, and a lot of very cross drivers. We do have a bypass but going through the centre of town is also kind of a rat run for people who fancy their piloting skills.* And they certainly aren’t going to yield any precious ground to a small old beat up red Golf VW.** First time I tried to get through to my turn there was a bus, and there was a large group of motorcycles, all of which had pulled out from behind to beside the bus so they could see what was going on. The second time I was two car-lengths from sanctuary, so I put my turn signal on and moved out . . . whereupon the lead car coming toward me–which was plenty far enough away–suddenly put his foot down and roared up to me because I was obviously trying to get away with something. Uh-huh. It’s called needing to drop hellhounds off at home so I could go ring a wedding. He then had to stop, blocking the mouth of my street. And of course everybody behind him instantly piled up on his tail so he couldn’t back up. Wolfgang, fortunately, has been well trained in difficult cross-country assault courses,*** so we mounted the kerb and up the blasted vertical bank: gecko on wheels. I made it to the wedding.
I got the introduction to Song II written this week, and transposed the third verse up a full step, which nearly killed me, all those C and F sharps to keep the intervals in, ahem, harmony. Fortunately Oisin told me a long time ago that the quality of what ought to be the same note or chord up or down an octave really does change, and once–when I was complaining about why anyone would choose to compose in sixty-seven flats when he† could do the same thing in two sharps–he played a couple of sixty-seven flats pieces in the original and then in two sharps, without telling me what he was doing, but he asked me which sounded better? And it was clearly the sixty-seven flats. So okay. I don’t get it, but there’s some musical truth there somewhere.†† The point here is that I was more or less ready for the transposition to Sound Funny. And it did. So I also spent some time this week jerking it around some more††† to make it sound, I don’t know, the way it sounded when it was one step down. Don’t ask me, I don’t understand any of this, I’m just reinventing the wheel.‡
But the bad news is that Oisin says Song II is pretty well finished, so I have no more excuse not to settle down and learn the sucker properly.‡‡ I’ve been putting this awful prospect off because I learn music so mortifyingly slowly . . . what if the composer changes her dadblatted mind again and rewrites something after I’ve learnt it? I’ll kill the cow. (This is also why I’m dependent on Oisin playing it all the way through for me once a week, so I can hear what the forest sounds like. I always get lost in the trees.)
I said, so, for my next trick, do I go back to Money Spider, or should I try resetting a folk song? –I’m bashing on, trying to learn a few more folk songs as part of my singing education, and it’s pretty funny, once you’re composing, suddenly all music becomes fluid and mutable and you’re playing something and you think, wait a minute, that would be better like that . . . I mean things like folk song arrangements, not Mozart. ‡‡‡ Oisin said, it’s up to you really, because it has to be what you want to do, but if you wanted to do it, I think you might add some of your weird chords to a folk song. McKinleyfy it.
I become a verb.
* * *
* I’ve already frothed at the mouth here about satnav, which sends trucks only slightly smaller than Rhode Island through here, so they can get stuck at the T intersection at the top of the hill in the precise centre of town, which vehicles slightly smaller than Rhode Island cannot get round, and block traffic in all directions for miles. The time it takes for the current behemoth to edge around the corner is frequently enhanced by the way people park. There flatly isn’t enough parking space in this town, so people get creative about how ‘enough room to put a car’ may be defined under urgent need. Further enhanced by the number of people who can’t parallel park to save their lives but by the gods that’s a parking space and they saw it first and it’s THEIRS. Oh and not to forget all the pedestrians that stroll across the street without looking right or left. . . .
** Although they should. I manifestly don’t care that much about the state of my fenders.
*** And has the fenders to prove it. Not to mention the undercarriage.
† Well, it was a he. I just forget which one. Someone who specialises in sixty-seven flats rather than two sharps.
†† Like the tritone. What arbiter of absoluteness declared that it’s unresolved and therefore a Wicked Noise? I like the way West Side Story sounds.
††† Muttering to myself. Doing it once was enough.
‡ And possibly the gecko. Writing music is very like a very tough cross country assault course.
‡‡ Toward this end I spent most of an hour after I got back to my piano doing the fingering. Good grief. However I see better now (and with considerable relief) what Oisin meant when I was fretting about playability some weeks back. If the music, you know, progresses, then apparently the way to play it–the fingering–will too.
‡‡‡ Although I do not entirely reject the possibility of doing variations on a theme by some day. Mmmmmmmmm.
Can’t Do It All Woman
Drat.
I know, I do my little tap dance about having to spend less time blogging with some regularity. Although I haven’t done it in a while* because I got tired of listening to myself say I’m going to alter my evil ways and then promptly fail to change anything. But . . .
My life was out of control before I started the blog last October, as anyone who’s gone back to the beginning, way back on lj, knows. I started by saying I didn’t have time for a blog. I didn’t. I don’t.
I was already taking piano lessons, last October. But then I started composing.** When this was only within a prescribed and specific few notes, time and key signature, it was merely an interesting little blip on my playing time. But it’s taken hold. Like a short story turning into a novel.***
And now I’ve started riding again?†
Meanwhile this week I’ve reluctantly decided that I have to put PEGASUS aside for long enough to pull my FIRE stories into final form so we can send them all off the end of the summer.†† I also have to think about getting the web site transformed to announce CHALICE, which I would like to do in the next month or so.††† Not that I’m going to be doing any of the work‡, but I have to decide what I want to ask for, and then suffer through the whole gruesome process of trying to understand what my webmaster is telling me about what’s possible and what isn’t. But the theory was–that’s was, that’s past tense–that I was going to have started revising the web site text towards doing some kind of global reorganization: the poor thing just grew in all directions and I never did get around to a master plan, and it shows . . . but I haven’t been doing that either because I’m spending too much of my that-kind-of-writing energy and too much of my time writing this blog.
And then . . . the galleys of the paperback of DRAGONHAVEN hit my doorstep.‡‡ Yesterday. Bang. And, as is always the way, I have about ten days to get them read. You think ten days sounds like plenty? Ha. Reading your own galleys is always excruciating, because all you can see is all the story stuff that it’s too late to change . . . and you keep trying to jerk your mind back to the awful question of typos, or, worse–and more terrifying–the possibility of entire lines or paragraphs left out, which–yes–happens, and which is usually something Only You the Author would catch, and what if you’re busy having a nervous breakdown and don’t notice?‡‡‡ Galleys are hell.§ Galleys for a reissue of an old novel aren’t quite so lacerating–you can tell yourself that you’ve learnt better and you wouldn’t make this or that appalling error of tone or development or style now–but DRAGONHAVEN is still way too fresh in my life and memory.
So in the short term I simply have to blog less. So there will be more photos, more links, more recipes.§§
And in the long term . . . maybe being short in the short term will teach me to be short. We live in hope.
And now . . . this isn’t short.§§§ But I’ve still got two hours till midnight to read proofs, and that’s what counts.
* * *
* Really I should though. I might forget the steps.^
^ Nah.
** I had–I took–two hours at the piano today. One to play, one to compose. It was delicious. It was also too short.
*** I wrote the intro to Song II today. Fiddled–er, pianoed–around with the join between the new introduction and the old beginning of the song for quite a while. And there’s the whole balance thing–just like expanding a short story–what was long enough when it was a short story is now probably either no longer long enough or has become subsidiary. Song II is as long as its verses, so my remit for any instrumental bits must be that they . . . as you might say, harmonise. It’s an interesting–new–discipline, since as a writer who keeps writing novels when she meant to be writing short stories I obviously don’t write to given length very well. I wonder if this is at all what it’s like doing illustrations? Where the story is already the story and anything you do must be grounded in or brought back to it.
† Lesson Two today went much better than I deserved. I’d warned Jenny that my legs were only semi-functional and maybe we should concentrate on nice square halts^. And we did in fact do a lot of nice square halts . . . and the surprising thing is they were. Nice and square. And halted. But we also did the other stuff we did last week–perhaps not quite as much of some of it–and it was all better organised. No doubt my instincts are struggling to return but have I mentioned in the last five minutes what a nice horse Connie is? She’s also obviously trying to adapt to her new rider.
She’s also a funny old thing, as horses often are. In the schooling ring she was all business^^ but it’s about a 100-yard walk from her stall to the ring and back again and by golly we were looking for bears. Horse-for-sale, Jenny says, has settled back down again, so I’m thinking he’s passed the I’m a Three Year Old Juvenile Delinquent parasite on to Connie. I’m hoping she’ll have passed it on to some other harmless creature by Saturday when I have to take her out into the tiger- and pig-infested countryside by ourselves.
^ Yes I know you still need your legs for nice square halts, but you don’t have to whisk+ them back and forth quite so quickly as for, say, change of leg at the canter, except not in Connie’s case, you just think about the other direction and she obeys telepathically. But I’m an old dressage girl, and I believe you have to ask properly.
+ Whisking is relative. We’re talking an inch or two here: in front of the girth, behind the girth. But it’s a precision thing, and precision requires muscle.
^^ Well nearly. There were those intimidating flowers on the far side of the ring, and those threatening Large Black Rubber Objects that appear to be part of a fence (a fence to jump, I mean) but are not at all to be trusted when leaning nonchalantly against the outside of the ring.
†† Anybody new to this blog: Peter and I are supposed to be doing a series of short story collections about elemental spirits, not just the single one we did for WATER. I’ve written three novels that started life as FIRE stories: SUNSHINE, DRAGONHAVEN and CHALICE. With reference to not writing to length too well. But I’ve now written two short stories that will remain short stories. Although I admit I would like to write a novel about what happens next in Hellhound [sic].
††† I’m unconvinced that you want to put up your banners too early. Then people get excited long before the book exists, and have become jaded before they can buy it.
‡ Shudder
‡‡ Somebody couldn’t have *&^%$£”+={]¬!!!!!!! warned me?!? I mean, yes, if it’s coming out in September, the galleys would be turning up some time around now. But I still feel a heads up would have been nice.
‡‡‡ I told you all this about reading galleys for CHALICE, right? Well, I’ll tell you all of it again, next galleys too. Galleys have this effect. You don’t get used to it.
§ Many things about publishing are hell.
§§ Which will make Hannah happy.
§§§ Rats. You noticed.