Update on “Two Years and Counting”

The holidays fast approach, the new year is only weeks away.  I’ve slogged along with my projects and am ready to update my “To Do” list:

The Blog Itself: After reviewing many, many themes here at WordPress, I decided that I wanted to stay with the one I have.  It’s clean, with white space for easy reading, and I like the widgets on the right.  I re-arranged those widgets and added introductory text that originally had been a subtitle.  Finding the right photo for the header gave me the opportunity to peruse dozens of photos of Vienna and I found photos of several places I love in that city.  The photo that now serves as the header photo is of the Cafe Diglas on the Wollzeile in the First District of Vienna, Austria.  The entrance is to the left and the photo has been taken from a diagonal perspective to see how the cafe stretches up the adjoining cross street.  It’s an old fashioned Viennese cafe, although it looks like they’ve spruced up the exterior.  This cafe inspired one of the cafe’s used as a location in Perceval. 

The Perceval Novels: No change in the last two months.  I continue to seek employment, so I’ll keep my writing plans on hold for the novels until that situation has been settled.

Marketing Perceval: I found another publisher to query but haven’t yet put the query package together.  I plan to complete this task before the end of the year.  I also need to develop another batch of agents to query.

Short Stories: Lots of progress here.  I’ve completed Lights and it’s ready to submit so I’ve been researching possible markets.  I submitted The Shadow to three contests, not two.  I continue to develop The Negligee and will try to get a first draft down on paper before the end of the year if not sooner.

Essays:  One of the essays I’d submitted two months ago, Waking to Mozart, was rejected.  I’m looking for other markets for it.  Future Mind was published in Mensa Bulletin in the October 2009 issue under the title Money Talks.  I completed another essay, Word Power, and submitted it last month.  I continue to work on the longer essay, Rare.  Another essay idea burbled up the other day, one considering our “supersized” society.

Memoir (book):  I continue to develop this project.  Recently played with the idea of an experience with a contest threading through the book to anchor it in the present. 

eHow.com: After a gung-ho beginning, my efforts at this website have fallen by the wayside.  I need to decide if it’s worth pursuing….

Miscellaneous: While researching short story markets, I grabbed an opportunity for a free sample copy of one of the magazines in exchange for writing a review of it here.  The magazine arrived today.  Watch for the review in the coming weeks!

So, after two months, I feel that I’ve made some progress, although I would have liked to have made more, of course.  The holidays confuse and complicate life at this time of year, as pleasant as they can be.  I am determined, however, to mail the submissions and complete the first drafts….

Coughing Mayhem…ahem…

In September 2008, I visited the subject of how to attend classical music concerts.  During recent internet research surfing, I ran across a fun essay at Theatlantic.com by Erik Tarloff entitled A Few words about Coughing.  Tarloff describes a concert of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony he attended at Lincoln Center and the uncanny focus of audience coughing during the quiet passages of music.  I’ve noticed this phenomenon, also.  Of course, louder passages would drown out the coughing. 

What is the reason for the coughing?  Here in Minnesota, the usual reason is the common cold or flu.  Tarloff, however, posits a theory concerning audience engagement with the music that also makes sense to me.  The amount of coughing correlates to the level of lack of interest in the audience member. 

Do you cough regularly at classical concerts?  If so, and you’re not sick, check your level of engagement in the music, how closely you’re listening to the music and watching the musicians.  I find it interesting that Tarloff noted people don’t usually cough during movies (no, they talk or text message on cell phones).  I attend plays at the Guthrie Theater on a regular basis and don’t ever recall hearing disruptive coughing during a performance.  Not like the hacking that Tarloff describes and I’ve heard during concerts at Orchestra Hall.  (I’ve also heard loud snoring in Orchestra Hall, but that’s another issue….)

With flu season almost upon us, and certainly novel H1N1 flu has been upon us since last March, I hereby review how to muffle a coughing fit until you can exit the concert hall.  Please, please, cover your mouth!  Please use a real cloth handkerchief (if possible) because the cloth absorbs the sound better than tissue.  Or, if no handkerchief is handy, do what public health nurses and other officials have been encouraging: cough into your elbow.  Easy.  And please, if you’re sick with the flu, whether seasonal, H1N1 or the notorious “flu-like illness,” please stay home, rest, drink lots of fluids and protect the rest of us from the illness you have.

Thank you for your consideration!

Contest Submissions

This week, I’ve worked hard to prepare the standalone novel excerpt, The Shadow, to submit to contests.  Success!  I submitted it to the Black Warrior Review Fiction Contest on Wednesday via Manuscripthub.com (as directed), making that deadline.  Today, I mail it out to two other contests, one at the Indiana Review and the other at Dogwood at Fairfield University in Connecticut, making those deadlines. 

Back to work on essays and short stories — more new ideas for essays this week…..

Two Years and Counting

Two years ago at this time, I had chosen which blogging site I wanted to use for my blog and I was working on a title, on what I wanted on the blog and how I wanted to organize it.  Two years!  I had not imagined that the blog would turn out to be a solid, strong endeavor, and include my other writing projects as well as the Perceval novels.  So where am I, as a writer, today?  What are my priorities?  What are my plans for the next two years?

The Blog Itself: Two years is a long time with one blog theme/layout, eh?  I’ve been looking at other themes in the last few weeks and trying to figure out what I want to do to tousle this blog’s hair, pump up the volume, and burnish its personality.  If all goes well, you’ll see some changes at some point in the next month or so.

The Perceval Novels: In March 2008, I put my work on the third novel in the series, Perceval in Love, on hold until I’d resolved some issues of everyday life that had intruded on my writing.  Those issues have been resolved, but a new one has arisen thanks to the tanked economy.  For the last two months, I’ve been looking for a job, and the search continues.  I think that I’ll probably not return to Book 3 until at least 6 months after I begin a job and have settled into a new routine and daily structure.  Any writer who also works a fulltime job knows the challenges of finding the time to write.  For me, the challenge is especially to find uninterrupted, quiet, solitary time for creative thinking.  I continue to write notes as ideas come to me, which they continue to do, thank god.

Marketing Perceval: I plan to continue my marketing efforts for Book 1, i.e. the search for a literary agent and/or publisher.  I recently received a rejection from the publisher I’d queried at the end of July.   I’ll mail another in the next week or two.

Short Stories: I’ve completed the first draft of a short story that had been banging around in my mind for the last year or so.  I have another short story in development.  So far, only these two stories cooking on the stove but I’d welcome more.  Shorter projects are easier to complete when time is limited.  I have revised The Shadow, the excerpt from Perceval, and will submit it to two contests, deadlines in October.

Essays: I submitted two different essays last month to two different publications.  The first draft of another essay is done.  I have ideas for at least two more essays, one longer than usual.  I will continue to work on this shorter form.

Other Nonfiction: I recently bought an accordion file in which to collect my notes for a memoir about money.  I’ve sketched out an outline, basically a Table of Contents, from which to work for now.  I’m sure once I begin writing notes, the rise of memories will gain momentum, and everything will change!

eHow.com: I have begun submitting articles to this website under the nom de plume “Fascinated.”

The last two years have been fun, and especially fun to meet other writers and readers here.  Thanks for visiting and come back again soon!  I’ll be here….