string theory

I found a place that has some beautiful cellos, and the rental fee is reasonable. I've been warned to make sure I get a cello bow and not a violin bow. Apparently, some dealers don't know the difference (not that I do either).

I've gotten some teacher leads from friends. The hard part is finding a teacher I click with. I talked to one on the phone and just didn't get a good feeling. He seemed awfully pushy. I'm not looking to become a virtuoso, for crying out loud. I'm just following my doctor's advice to work less and play more.

And speaking of playing, I was prodded (you should see the bruises) to submit a short short story (2500 words or less) to a publisher , so last weekend, I managed to come up with something respectable (heh, and my word count was 2499). They even sent me a lovely e-mail saying "the story had arrived safely." Tom Petty was right - the waiting (to see if they even like the story) is the hardest part. If nothing else, it was a good writing exercise because 2500 words is not a lot, so not only do you have to revise your thinking about what constitutes a story, but you also have to choose your words carefully - it's one thing to be economical with words, it's another thing entirely to be economical with words but not lose meaning or flavor. The only way I could think to do it was to write out a draft and then start pruning words. I had to cut about 1000 words from the original draft to get it down to 2500! That was really the most laborious part of the process.

The NaNoWriMo people are conducting a spin-off program in June called Script Frenzy, so I may attempt that in addition to November noveling. Of course, I know nothing about writing scripts, but that's a minor detail.