3 posts tagged “writing”

the last few days, i've been writing like mad. everything i see, everything i read is just sparking off ideas left, right and centre. i've been working through a document explaining search engine optimisation for a couple of clients who don't have a web background, so they understand how to frame their content, and really enjoying it. and i keep starting big meaty blog posts... and then getting bogged down in my own verbosity and stopping, and starting again anew. i guess it's been a while since i've really written anything of consequence that required real live logical thought. so maybe i should keep this post to the one paragraph. just to prove i can :-)

... or why a deadline is good for the soul

today marks the start of music's equivalent of nanowrimo - the opera in a month challenge! i just received the email announcing this year's topic - AESOP - and have now to work out how to write a 10-30 minute opera on the topic, including libretto, by the end of the month. wow. i'm feeling a little intimidated by it, but i'm also really chuffed at the topic, which is nice and broad and allows one to twist it a bit, if one so chooses. i'm not sure how to approach the libretto cos i've never tried to write a libretto before and creative writing (as opposed to essay writing) is really not my thing, but i'll give it a go, because we're supposed to do it ourselves, and if i find i'm having trouble, i'll beg my da for assistance (allowed but just not encouraged)

when i'm going to find time to write the music, i really don't know because we're pretty much fully booked until we leave australia on the 24th, but i felt it was worth trying and i usually do work better to a deadline. not so confident of finishing on time though that i signed up for the competition - it's open challenge only for me this year. maybe i'll think about the competition for next year.

so, aesop. of course the starting point is the fables, which might be good for me, not ever having tried to write a libretto - i'd have a good dramatic framework and no danger of getting bogged down in trying to invent a story, but, as the spec points out, there's a bunch of other potential options available too:

• original fable based on an aesop maxim (usually listed after a fable)
• an anti-fable tied somehow to aesop
• a human reduction of a fable by aesop, staged in the real world etc.
• base libretto on the life or legends surrounding the life of Aesop
• aesop could become a character in period drama
• aesop could become a character in time travel story
• aesop could be used as a stock character as in commedia d'elle arte
• include an aesop-like character (a fable-crafter or fable-teller)

most of these sound a little ambitious for me, but i'll give them a good think about over the next couple of days - it's good to approach things from different angles, even if one ends up taking the easy path of just creating a libretto from a fable.

so off i go - wish me luck!

it's been weeks and weeks now since i've managed to do a decent clump of work, but today i ordered myself to get a move on, and it's been really good - i churned out the melody for a new walt whitman song to keep the other one company, and had a play around in pro tools with midi exports of the parts i've been foozling with for the satie arrangement for america - my plan was always to include a tape part and i think i've made a good start. need to record some clocks ticking or metronomes or something now, i think. random ticky sorts of sounds anyway.

it feels good to be working again.

then this afternoon djeli and i went to maidenhead to take back the chair he bought six months ago which fell apart a month after he bought it. amazingly they did take it back, even if they only gave him a gift voucher in exchange instead of cash. but that's ok. we came back through slough. i don't think i need to do that again.

it feels good to have broken furniture gone from the living room too.

this is the poem i'm using for the current song. not quite so depressing as the last one, but still fairly low-key. it's a chunk from a longer poem called proud music of the storm:

come forward, o my soul, and let the rest retire,
listen, lose not, it is toward thee they tend,
parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber,
for thee they sing and dance o soul

(why does it only do opening quotes and not closing ones when i indent?)