Better
I’m better.* I’m still not planning on conquering the world this week but maybe next.** I would be better better if I hadn’t had the standard nonsense of my energy starting to flow back in yesterday evening with the result that I COULD NOT GET TO SLEEP LAST NIGHT.*** So today has been a struggle. A different kind of struggle, but there’s still been a certain amount of Antaeusian wrestling about it, and holding a giant over your head gets really tiring.
Also my brain is lying on the bottom of my skull like a soufflé hit with a shovel. Have I mentioned that both Niall and Penelope have degrees in hard science? Niall thinks he’s going to teach me the rudiments—repeat: rudiments—of calculus† and Penelope has loaned me a couple of basic physics texts that she used when she was a classroom teacher. I took the easier†† of these two alarming-looking textbooks to the sofa with me this afternoon with the very basic text that I bought about a week ago because I know from experience that one explanation isn’t going to shatter my ignorance, and . . . whimper.
Meanwhile, there was Oisin.
jessgoesnorth
I wonder if the quality of the recording was part of the problem. Lots of recorders compress the sound in a way that cuts out all the nice resonance which you’re working to get into your voice. . . . Built in microphones are generally pretty poor as well – various singing fora recommend proper recording equipment that costs a fortune but a separate microphone you can connect to a computer might be a good stand-in if you want to record yourself more often with less wincing! (I’d always go for recording the sound alone rather than sound and video… less to wince about!)
I don’t know how to turn off Pooka and Astarte’s video—I don’t know how to record sound only and as you say it’s not going to solve the built-in microphone problem. I did know that I wasn’t going to be getting a great result but no, it didn’t occur to me that it might be quite this destructive—I mean that what I’m hearing when I play back is that much, ahem, less accurate than the original noise I was making. But this is almost exactly what Oisin said to me today: record on an iPhone? Am I crazy? But it’s worse than that—because he does have professional recording equipment and in fact has a little handheld gizmo that he says has fabulous sound and (he added heartily) that we’ll use that. Gleep. You’re all systematically destroying my wiggle room, you know? I was deliberately recording myself when I wasn’t at my best, and I also knew that Pooka and Astarte as jills-of-all-trades were not going to be fabulous recorders, even if I didn’t know how unfabulous. Ah well, there will still be the wiggle room of the fact that I get feverishly anxious about singing for Oisin. Which probably explains why I keep forgetting to photocopy my music.†† So I can only sing stuff that he can bear having me shrieking past his ear, and then I usually can’t read the lyrics well enough anyway and am busy panicking, so sing most of it on ‘ah’.
But for example the accompaniment to She’s Like a Swallow is really pretty (as we discovered today). It’s one of these frellers where the accompaniment is having its own party and mere singers are not invited, however, but it would be worth persevering. Hmm. This may the moment to experiment with the CD in the back of the book.
Have you thought about recording your lessons? Not only does it capture the good bits, but I used to find it very helpful to sing along to recorded warm-ups from lessons to try and recapture a bit of that singing teacher studio magic!
. . . And the bad bits. But yes. Nadia also mentioned a long time ago now that some people do record their lessons. That went straight past me like a bullet, with me cringing frantically out of the way. But it’s occurred to me again lately. Because it is so frustrating that I’m now at the stage where I’m more relaxed at home—I have not merely a G and an A at home, but more often than not a B-below-high-C—and Nadia never bothers luring me above G, and sometimes stops at F. I can hear myself shutting down. I can’t get the (comparatively) lovely round notes out of myself that she can—but I can yowl up to G and usually A without thinking about it. So I have been wondering if it might be worth trying to record a lesson. On whatever Styrofoam and chewing gum tech I’d be using I’m not going to get the round notes, but I would get what Nadia says to me.
PamAdams
I do weight-training. Pushing through a too-heavy lift, even though I need a spotter to assist, will improve my strength tomorrow.
If it doesn’t break you. However I do have enough sense not to be trying to sing Una Voce Poco Fa. Yet.
I’ve been working on my own for the last year. . . . However, I’m definitely noticing a tendency to coast, so am signing up for more training.
Yes. This is one of those the world-is-divided-into-two-categories things. There are the people who understand about taking lessons/going to practise sessions even when neither your job, your relationship(s) nor your mental health demands it and you’re never going to be professional/the best/even sort of moderately good at it, and the people who don’t get this at all. I am absolutely in the former category. Generally speaking anything I want to spend time doing on a regular basis I want to do better. It’s just . . . more interesting, trying to do something better. I do have the excuse of writing stories for a living—the more different things you can crawl inside of, the more stuff you have to draw on when the Story Council sends you something impossible.††† But my personal experience of first-class music is absolutely enhanced by my ridiculous struggles with piano and voice—and my possibly even more absurd forays into composing mean that I look at scores with a whole extra dimension of curiosity and engagement. Oisin was playing Durufle and Reger on the organ today and I was hanging over his shoulder and thinking, how do they do that? —Aside from being brilliant, that is.
Bratsche
When I ask my students to record themselves, I ALWAYS tell them they need to discount at least half of what they hear as the fault of their recording equipment. (Unless, of course, they have professional level recording equipment on hand, which none of mine have ever had.) We’re very used to hearing other people performing who have been recorded with pretty good equipment in decent acoustic spaces.
I entirely forgot about the decent acoustic spaces part. I don’t suppose the boiling water and the clash of pans were doing me any favours the other night. Sigh. But there is a fabulous little handheld doohickey in my future. . . .
And I do have a doodle of gigantic throbbing neon ratbags, as requested by Blogmom on the forum last night. You will be thrilled to know. But this is long enough and you’ll just have to wait.
Mwa hahahahahahaha.
* * *
* jkribbitdesigns
. . . thank you for sharing your coping skills and thank everyone on the forum for sharing their experiences. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia 15 years ago . . . I’m in the midst of a huge flare. . . It’s very discouraging. Reading the last couple of posts from Robin and all the comments on the forum, I don’t feel as alone in this. . . .
I find it pretty discouraging that so many of us still feel so isolated. Some of it is the nature of the disease(s) themselves: if you’re tired and sore and stupid engaging with the world is hard: you’re too tired, you hurt too much, and your brain is porridge. But some of it, I feel, is that there’s still a bias that what’s wrong with us isn’t a real disease—and that we’re only welcome in polite society if we pretend to be ‘normal’—which we can only do on a good day, we can’t predict when we’re going to have a good day, and why should we have to anyway? I know there are exceptions, but the people I know who get it usually get it because they have some direct experience of someone with one of these slippery conditions.
Anyway. I talk about my ME more than I planned to when I started this blog, for exactly this reason—that I hear from too many people saying it’s a relief to hear more injured parties talking about it.
Diane in MN
Could an infection have sparked your ME flare?
Almost certainly. I think of it as my jealous boyfriend. How dare I have a flirtation with a random virus? I belong to it.
** No, I haven’t got time to conquer the world. I have to finish a novel.
*** Thanks for all the game recs. The only ones I’d seen by the time I shut down the laptop last night were Maren’s, so, while I was lying awake I investigated them on Astarte and for the venial reason that it was the cheapest I bought THE AWAKENING. But you may remember my little broadband issues. It took nearly an hour, give or take, to download the freller—I went back to my nice paper-tech book for a while and eventually gave up and turned the reading light off again . . . and lay there in the glinting twilight of Astarte’s screen. Yes, of course I could have put her in the next room^ but I was transported to an ancient era when you might fall asleep with the TV on^^ and wake up to darkness and an empty flickering blue screen. How many of you remember when, not only was there no internet, the TV went off the air every night?
^ Some kind of Rubicon is crossed when you start sleeping with your technology. Astarte is on the bed. Pooka is on the shelf beside, next to the kitchen timer I use for an alarm clock. Pooka is of course (metaphorically) hardwired to Peter’s emergency buzzer . . . and Astarte is also my ereader. It’s logical really.
^^ I have never had a TV in the bedroom+ but there have been several eras in my life that have involved falling asleep on the sofa.
+ Eww. Sorry, but eww.
† HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
†† Which is to say the one with more photographs and fewer equations.
††† Slightly in my defense, my copier lives at the cottage, and my piano and my music live at the mews.
‡ Like right now. I have a Definition of the Universe Through Your Friend, Physics waiting in my email inbox. I need to read those basic physics books fast. I should really learn not to ask experts. They may answer. They may then expect you to enter into a conversation with them on the subject they feel you brought up. Gleep again. Gleep cubed.
Luck
Yesterday’s luck wasn’t all bad. I got my post up earlier than usual*, noticing in a distant, detached way** that it was sheeting with rain and going back to the cottage was going to be interesting.*** I was standing at the sink doing the last washing-up and watching the solid wall of water sliding down the kitchen window when . . . the lights went out. About a second later there was an almighty crack of thunder and lighting in Jehovan, Greater-Trump mood. Gleep. I was in the process of working out where the nearest torch† was—you may have noticed the way ordinary reality takes on strange whorls and slipstreams in sudden near-absolute dark—when the lights came back on again.†† My first thought had been for the hellhounds—especially the part about tripping over them in the blackness while I’m still deaf from the thunder††† and cannot hear the click of claws on lino. But hellhounds don’t mind thunder, lightning or fireworks all that much, although Chaos has been known to try and chase the funny lights/shadows of the local Guy Fawkes celebration which teems in the windows at the mews. Last night they remained crashed out in the dog bed.
My second thought was for my computer. I Have Perhaps Mentioned that I am about to buy a new workhorse laptop because this one is dying. It has been stalwart and uncomplaining for several years and in laptop terms it’s about 200 years old and it has withstood an awful lot of keyboard-bashing when Word, Outlook or broadband is being particularly grotesque, which is often.‡ But the breaking point‡‡ was a few days ago when I unplugged it to put it into my briefcase-equivalent to take back to the cottage, and a little orange light started blinking in a subdued but urgent fashion. Now I could spend £65 or so on a new battery . . . or I could recognise the handwriting on the wall. ‡‡‡ I’m trying to remember the last time the power went out. But the day I say ‘yes’ to the specs proffered by Raphael § . . . the power goes out.
Twice. The second time the bang was louder. The lights came on again a few minutes later, and the laptop is still functioning. §§ Not so, however, the router, which was fried to a cinder. Fortunately—which is where we came in—I got my blog post up earlier than usual last night. . . .
* * *
I was moaning to Oisin about SHADOWS which, as I keep saying, would be going very well if it was due in August§§§. For the end of January, not so much. I have a great idea! said Oisin. You can cut it in half (January is halfway, right?) and end it on a cliffhanger!#
* * *
Second check: I was a few minutes late## to bell practise and as I scuttled down the road to the tower I wondered why I wasn’t hearing anyone ringing up.### I panted up the ladder and discovered Penelope lounging on a bench in a ringing chamber magnificently devoid of bell ropes. We have not worked on our telekinetic skills to the extent perhaps we should have, and our ability to ring bells without ropes is poor. There were murmurs and thumps from upstairs. Vicky came down a few minutes later to say grimly that Felix had been supposed to put the ropes back on on Wednesday~ but had . . . clearly failed to do so. Roger, Niall and Leo were up in the belfry being manly, and we were more than happy to let them get on with it.~~ Rehanging ropes is always a ratbag: having crippled yourselves and got covered with cobwebs, the ropes are never the right length. The two was so short we had to climb on each other’s shoulders to reach it, and the four is now long enough for Rapunzel’s prince to climb up it.~~~ However, the ropes did get hung in time for us to ring a little. There was a certain quality of whoa, what is this thing%, since our bells have been out of action for one reason or another the last three weeks and at least for the hoi polloi (ahem) one loses one’s edge rather quickly.%% And after Christmas our bells will be taken away for months. Whimper.
Uh-oh. It’s raining again. . . .
* * *
* No, I still got to bed at dawn, which is easier again since the clocks went back. Personally I’d rather have the afternoon hurtle in daylight, but cranky letters to the Time Authority^ have no more influence than cranky letters to the Story Council.
^ And so, okay, you might decide that they’ve just come down officially on the mucking-us-about-twice-a-year side+ but I’m sure there’s a unilaterality to the weeping and gnashing of teeth over the Time Authority’s inexplicable refusal to give us a few more hours in the day.
+ And what does any bureaucracy live for but to muck us about?
** FRELL. FRELL FRELL FRELL.
*** More frelling.
† flashlight
†† And my printer went mad. CHUNTER CHUNTER CHUNTER WHACK WHACK WHACK CLICK. Repeat. Repeat again. Repeat several more times, till unplugged.
††† It was nearly that loud.
‡ ‘Most of the time’ is probably more accurate.
‡‡ Speaking of breaking points, and the fact that a car must start: Diane in MN suggested I ask-a-mechanic on www.cartalk.com about Wolfgang’s ominous erratic fault. Has anyone out there ever done this? They want you to pay for the privilege, which is reasonable if they’ve got real mechanics on call, but they want your credit card #—not PayPal—and I’ve never heard of Just Answer, and yes, I am extremely twitchy about brandishing my credit card on the internet.
‡‡‡ ‘Buy a new computer, stupid.’
§ Hard drive bigger than god, crumbs-and-tea proof^ keyboard, sufficient muscle to recharge the iPad and an electromagnetic clamp for hanging grimly on to wonky broadband signal.
^ The drip-prone filling of Green & Black’s mint is not mentioned. I should ask.
§§ Note to self: buy new surge protectors.
§§§ to wit^, a year from when I started it.
^ There’s a joke here . . . but I’m too tired.
# No jury would convict me.
## Hellhounds and I were very comfortable on the sofa.
### At least they had finally got the alarm in the bank on the corner turned off. It has been going all day. It was going last night when hellhounds and I finally got back to the cottage, and at rmmph o’clock in the morning, in the dark, with no one around but you and the floodwater sluicing down the road the moooop moooop moooop noise sounds like an announcement of the end of the world. And fortunately it’s cool enough to have the windows closed on that side of the house, and my bedroom is on the other side anyway. But by the time hellhounds and I hurtled past the bank, the corner and the alarm in daylight it had outstayed its welcome.
~ Apparently there had been one more day after the one more day after the one more day before the forces of imposed order finally declared the job done.
~~ This is an occasion where being larger and stronger is a boon, but since I’m taller than either Niall or Roger . . . I will plead ME.^
^ It does have its uses. You’d just far rather find your excuses somewhere else.
~~~ There would be a problem when he got to the arrow-slit window however.
% Clearly not the Staypuft Marshmallow Man.
%% Grandsire? Why don’t you just call him Granddad or Gramps like a normal person?
The Announcement You Don’t Want to Hear
A few of you already know this, and I’m sure some of you have guessed. That doesn’t make the official announcement any more fun, for you or me.
PEG II is not coming out in 2012.
The reason I’m guessing a fair number of you have figured it out is because there has been a notable lack* of eager queries about how I’m getting on. And while a lot of you don’t know that it (usually) takes about a year for a book to grind through the publishing process and appear on shelves and e-screens near you, quite a few of you do know. And is there any screaming red doolally chance that I wouldn’t have told you that I’d turned PEG II in?
No. No chance, screaming red doolally or otherwise. It’s also true that I sent PEGASUS in several times, trying to hang onto the schedule of getting it out last year, so that my editor could keep an eye on its progress and warily hold space in the schedule open for it as I ran later and later and LATER over deadline. I think the final version went in in December—occasionally having a fading memory is a comfort—I remember more than I want to of the heart-bursting race to finish. Some authors produce a beautiful new book every year and never break a sweat. Some of us develop hernias and sunspots** over every adjective . . . and don’t produce a beautiful new book every year.
The story thus far: PEG II has been an indescribable, demon-infested nightmare pretty much from the minute I sat down to go on with the story after PEG I was accepted and passed into the publishing machine. I had quite a lot of story left over from when I whacked PEG I in half—well, in two-thirds and one-third. I knew a fair amount of the remaining one-third was going to need rewriting because PEG I had moved the goalposts around in some pretty significant ways. But that was okay; I was still ahead. I wasn’t starting from zero the way I usually am when I begin a new novel. And it’s true I wasn’t starting at zero: I was starting at minus forty-six bazillion, but it took me a while to figure this out.
Anyway . . . writing PEG II has been gruesome. It’s been so gruesome that I’ve had a few of those dark nights of the soul when I wondered if I was, you know, broken somehow, and couldn’t write. These moments were very, very bad.
Very, very, very, very bad.
So. It’s August. I have kind of given up, but I don’t know what else to do except try to keep writing this thing that won’t be written. There’s all kinds of stuff going wrong—I know where I should be headed but the plot line keeps twisting out my hands and slogging off somewhere else. People and sub-plots emerge and disappear; the landscape shifts and blurs; the words won’t come, and when they do they’re the wrong ones; it’s bricks without straw, and there’s a gritty, crumbly mess where there should be a story. And then I’ll hit some scene, some conversation, some development that is absolutely clean shining crystal clear . . . amid so much fog and muck I don’t know what to do with it or how I got there or how I get on to the next thing.
Despair. I start thinking about alternate careers. Ditch-digger or something. Maybe Jenny can use a stall-mucker. She’s usually short on staff.
I don’t know when, if I weren’t so adamantly set against any such idea, the truth would have occurred to me. In hindsight I should have known pretty goddam soon, because of the way PEG II wouldn’t let itself be written. But hey, I never claimed to be intelligent, only imaginative. But there was this sense, if I hadn’t been too stubborn to see it, of cramming several gallons into a pint-pot. . . .
PEGASUS is a trilogy. That thing I said I would never write. Arrrgh. Also eeeeep. And yaaaaah.
Oh, and the second book ends even worse than the first. The second one is called*** EBON, which should more or less answer the burning question all of you who have read the first one have, but having dealt with that little matter something even more appalling happens. Well, slightly depending on your idea of more appalling, but . . . mmmrmmph. You’ll see. But you won’t see next autumn.
The third book is—I think—called THE GOLDEN COUNTRY. That’s what it’s called at the moment anyway: that’s what it introduced itself as. And . . . um . . . I hope the frell that’s the end.
Meanwhile . . . my first reaction to this revelation of a third book (even if that did mean trilogy) was relief. Gigantic, overwhelming relief. I wasn’t broken! I was just—stupid! I can live with stupid!
It still took me about a month to tell Merrilee. I was sure she and my editor would hate me forever, and who could blame them? Schedules are schedules and publishing is a business. Dither. Haver. Twitch. So I did what any sensible having-found-out-she’s-still-an-author-after-all writer would do. I started another novel.
Listen: I can’t face PEG right now. Cannot. It needs to relax out of the knots I made of it. I’m going to have to go back to the beginning of PEG II and unpick the strands, thread by thread, and lay them out flat again and try to see what they are this time. I’m going to have to rewrite it . . . pretty much as if this last year never happened. (Siiiiiiiiigh.) And first I have to get my breath—and my courage—back. So does poor PEG, I suspect. The Client Complaints department of the Story Council has probably heard a lot about my shortcomings this last year. Well someone could have told me.
So, I started this new novel. And it actually went, like a novel should. My first drafts are always fairly painful, but they should accumulate, paragraph after paragraph. Like this one seems to be doing. Like PEG II never did. After about a month I told Merrilee what had happened. I knew something was up with you, she said. I just didn’t know what. She promised to tell my editor while I hid under the bed. And then my editor was wonderful about it. Oh, a new novel, she said. That’s terrific. When can you hand it in?
Have I mentioned I’m running out of money? I was supposed to turn PEG II in, oh, last month or so. I need to get paid.
Well, I said to my editor, I was kind of hoping to have it in for spring ’13.
Great, said my editor. I’m looking forward to it. I need it the end of January.
It takes me a year in a good year to write a book. A good year when I have some idea what I’m doing and where the story came from, and haven’t spent the previous ten months believing I’m broken. And I’m presently trying to write a book that I had barely spoken to before the middle of August . . . in less than six months.
So, am I even more totally over the edge crazed than usual? Yes, I am.
To be continued. . . .
* * *
* For which I am extremely grateful
** Sic. It’s a very rough life, being this kind of writer.
*** I think. At the moment I’m trying not to be too categorical about anything. My poor editor tried to announce this a while back and I said NO NO NO NO NO, which again in 20/20 hindsight, or possibly 751/751 hindsight, was a precursor to all the other eruptions and meltings down and chemical metamorphoses unknown to science and literature that were about to occur. The second book has always been called EBON, since the moment I knew PEGASUS was going to be two (cough, cough) books. The reason I lost my nerve, I think, was that I hadn’t yet seen there was a third beyond it.
Long thirds at 8:50 a.m.
I did notice, as I flew down the street at eight-forty-five this morning, that it was a beautiful day. Blue sky. Fresh crisp autumn air. Good hurtling weather. Later. I should live so long. Pant, pant, pant. At the top of the ladder there were four other ringers, and none of them Monty our beginner.* Groan. Doubles, then, and doubles without a cover.** And we set off on Grandsire. And the very first full lead frelling Roger called a single.
Nooooooo
- Guess who was on the three. Guess who got to ring long thirds for that first single.***
- Roger was calling from the five.
- The sixth bell, with no one to ring it. The curly thing a third down from the top is the sally, and you’re right, I omitted it on the other five ropes. I’m trying to practise drawing small since for postage reasons I decreed from the outset that doodles were going to go on A6 paper. (This is not A6. It’s A5. I cannot get five ringers on A6 paper, let alone a sixth bell rope.) But the more I doodle the larger I keep trying to get. Arrgh. Oh, and the tomahawk thing two-thirds of the way down is the Up Knot. You tie your bell rope so it doesn’t trail on the floor—if an up bell rope got trodden on and the bell yanked off its perch the results could be disastrous.†
[Note that darling adorable WordPress has DECREED that a list shall be designated by NUMBERS not letters even if the list was WRITTEN AS LETTERS and the doodle displays them as such. {Blogmom fix} Have I mentioned lately HOW MUCH I LOVE WORDPRESS? NOT?]
But you know . . . we got through. Ah the glories of auto-pilot. I may not be able to ring a touch of Grandsire Triples at frelling Forzadeldestino but I can (probably) ring a touch of Grandsire doubles on a Sunday morning on too little sleep†† without a tenor, even when a frelling single is called first frelling full lead and I’m the one making (frelling) long thirds. What’s more, as if this were not infamy enough, Niall asked me to call a touch of bob doubles next. Can’t I rest on my laurels here a minute?††† And even that went okay. I remembered where it ended.‡
The rest of the day has paled following such magnificence. Although it was an excellent hurtling day. . . . OH GODS I’m near the end of ALEX IN NUMBERLAND. I’m going to have to download another book. ::pre-emptive swearing::
* * *
* Although Monty is learning to ring inside. It’s not going to be much longer that the presence of Monty is any help at all on a Sunday morning when one is feeling less than optimum. He can already ring tenor-behind, so when there are five supposedly real ringers like there were today we are still forced to ring doubles methods, although the sixth bell does help stabilise the situation.
** See previous footnote. The sixth bell also slows the row down (ie six bells ringing not five) to a noticeable—and desirable—degree. When you’re the walking narcoleptic every little helps.
*** Horrible Long Grandsire Thirds are not as dire as the Dreaded Three-Four Down Single in bob minor, but it’s next in line of ordinary mid-level-mediocre bell-ringing diabolicalness.
† You also tie your rope up when the bell is down. Because you do. But the knot is different so in theory even if you’re only one-quarter awake and have staggered up to the ringing chamber for obscure reasons and have managed to miss all the three-foot-tall red-lettered signs, if the bells are up, that say THE BELLS ARE UP. DO NOT TOUCH THE ROPES, you will know immediately by looking at the knot if a bell is up or down.
PamAdams: This is why people are not allowed in belfries when the bells are up, that is, mouth up, balanced precariously on their narrow ends, ready to be pulled off and rung.
Plus The Nine Tailors problem.
But you know, we rarely, even despite extreme provocation, tie people up in our belfries and leave them there.
†† But what else is new
††† Us mediocre ringers have an inflated—or possibly deflated—notion of what earns laurels.^
^ I’m not actually sure I want to rest on laurels. May I have a nice sofa instead? And maybe some hellhounds.
‡ My standard failure. I’m so thrilled at having got through without a mistake I forget to call ‘that’s all’ and except that Roger usually does it for me we might have to ring a whole extra plain course.
It’s alive
Okay, here we go. Knock yourselves out. Please.
http://robinmckinleysblog.com/bells/
It runs from NOW till 2 pm Chicago USA time* Sunday, 9 October.**
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* Because Blogmom is running the back end, and that’s her time zone
** Doodles may run longer. We’ll see how it goes.