(nearly) a year in the Treehouse

I can hardly believe I've been in the Treehouse for almost a year already. (January 15, 2012 will officially be one year)

I got the red couches. And the bookcases. I also set up a guest room, painted the downstairs bathroom, and replaced the front rain gutter.

I'm calling this my "observational" gardening year. My front garden did far better than my side patio garden. I did next to nothing to the front garden except cut back the rose bushes. The previous owners were clever with the front garden - it pretty much takes care of itself, and the plants and flowers in it are seasonal, so there's always something new coming up as something else has finished for the year. There was also so much rain this year that I didn't need to do much watering at all. It may need another layer of mulch next year, but that looks to be it.

The side patio garden was more of a headache, er, challenge. The side patio gets a lot of attention, both from afternoon sun and from the local wildlife. My next door neighbors puts out birdseed every morning, which the birds and the squirrels take full advantage of. Then they come next door to my patio for second breakfast. I didn't realize how much digging they were doing in my raised beds until I found one of the seedpods I'd used for seedstarting lying well outside the box. I got some wire hoops and netting for the boxes, which served as a decent deterrent, but the damage was already done, and most of the loot was already stolen, so there wasn't much of a harvest. My tomato box did okay, though, courtesy of Gardener's Supply Catalog's Organic Tomato Success Kit.

Writing

While all that was going on, I got Tempus House published as an ebook. It went through a title change and an unexpected major edit, but it's out there finally. Yay!

The next novel is STILL in revision. I did a major re-write on it and added a character, which certainly made it more interesting. That was a relief because I was beginning to think I would have to abandon the story, and I didn't want to do that because I have an odd faith in it. There is another character, though, that either has to come out or at least be diminished. I used up too much story space on his past with the main character. It explains the main character's motives, but it could be done more succinctly. And while he's meant to be an antagonist, he doesn't have to be such a bloody insufferable one.

I finished a children's novella, and did some digging on e-publishing for children. Just as I ran into problems with a new title for Tempus House, I ran smack into a wall with the cover for this novella. I'm not liking this last-minute calamity pattern. Anyway, a new cover is in the works. I am a slow writer/reviser/editor (or perhaps "an annoyingly/alarmingly thorough" one would be more accurate), and I'm an even slower graphic designer. You do not want to know how long it took me to find the perfect image for the Tempus House cover.

I spent just about all of October outlining the novel I worked on in November for NaNoWriMo. This definitely gave the actual writing a lot more direction, so writing sessions were more productive. Unfortunately, I was plagued by severe right-side neck and shoulder pain for most of the month, so I had to cut back on the daily word count goal. The draft is done though, and acupuncture and physical therapy  helped me do battle with the neck and shoulder pain...which was then all undone by the car accident I was in last week.

Cello

I've worked on the Prelude to Bach's "Suite No. 1 in G major" off and on over the year as a kind of independent study experiment to see what two-and-a-half years' worth of lessons have taught me as I attempt a piece on my own, outside of what I work on for lessons. The result showed me that I can analyze it, recognize the patterns, break it into chunks and layers to work on, listen to versions for comparison, and more or less chip away at it a bit at a time. So it's fair to say I get the concept of "strategy."

However, I was not able to devote as much practice time to it as I had hoped because I hadn't factored in the increasing complexity and length of the pieces I would be working on in my lessons with Ben. Meaning I spent more time on them in my daily practice sessions than I had spent on pieces in my first year of cello study. This is logical of course, and it was silly of me not to have taken it into account ahead of time. So the poor prelude was often pushed aside while I struggled with the other pieces. I humbly apologize to it and to Bach, and I will soldier on with it into the new year.

I've done a bit better with vibrato. I incorporated it into scale practice (I love two-fer efficiency!). Decent first-finger vibrato still eludes me - I'm just overly stiff with that finger, and I swing my arm well into my body, which I don't do with the other fingers - no idea why I think of first finger as its own entity. Consequently, vibrato with the other fingers is improving and starting to feel a little more natural. Only problem is, I often don't think to use it in anything but scales, so it's going on the layering list as a reminder to work on it in actual pieces.


I already have plans for next year, which may or may not be a good idea, although the intent is to keep me productive, happy, and out of trouble. Saving those for the next post.