A Week in Review: Gifts come in all sizes and shapes

Every day we are given countless gifts that, oftentimes, we don't even realize are gifts. To that extent, some say that each and every day itself is a gift. I say keep your senses alert and appreciate all the gifts in your life, no matter the size or shape, tangible or intangible.

For each day that passed this week, I could name something that I felt was truly a gift to me. On the outside, some of these moments may seem like nothing more than a phone call or a book, but in truth, each of them held something more: each was a gift.

Gift of Trust:

At the beginning of the week, I received a call from a grandfather whose young eleven-year-old granddaughter had joined the youth symphony. At the first rehearsal, there was a parent meeting in which my primary role was to show up in concert black dress attire so that all parents and students know what is acceptable for concerts. 

Concert Black Attire
(Picture courtesy of the gift of a clarinet photo shoot from my sister-in-law)

This grandfather had been so impressed with my professional-looking outfit that he telephoned me the next day to discuss how his granddaughter could find just-the-right outfit to look professional, yet still age appropriate.

On the phone to me, he expressed that he just wanted to make his granddaughter feel comfortable as she was very excited to be a part of the symphony but also apprehensive as she is one of the younger players.

After the first rehearsal, the grandfather had taken his granddaughter out to dinner: "Wherever she wanted," he'd told me. At the restaurant (Red Robin), they had talked about the symphony and the conversation had turned to the topic of her dress attire for the concerts. When the elder queried the younger about what she might want to wear for the concerts, she said she'd liked what I had worn. He agreed that the outfit looked "quite sharp." 

I talked to this gentleman for at least a half an hour discussing all sorts of options as to what I thought would be appropriate for a young female student and where one might purchase outfits.

"I know you are a busy woman," he said to me, "and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about this."

Honestly, I'd never discussed clothing so in depth. But, by the time I hung up I'd realized that he'd made my day. Why? Because he'd given me a gift of trust. It might sound silly to some, but that simple phone call, a grandfather wishing to make his granddaughter feel important and comfortable, made me feel important as well. He saw me not only as an adult* but as a leader and somebody he could trust to give him an honest and authoritative answer. He trusted my style (what!) and my knowledge as a musician and instructor enough to call me and ask something that to some might seem entirely ridiculous. He trusted that I wouldn't take it as something inane, but instead that I would respect it.

It's important to remember: sometimes the smallest things make the biggest changes.

In an ironic turn of "what a small world" events, it turns out this gentleman's son graduated from the same high school I did (which is three hours away in a completely different area) six years prior to my graduation.

*("Oh, so you're a real adult?" has actually been said to me before. I was 22. Sometime I'll share that story on here.)

Gift of Thanks:

My students are always gifts to me. Each one I have reminds me how much I enjoy teaching clarinet lessons. I work with some of these students for many years. As such, I get the privilege to watch these boys and girls grow into young men and women. In due time, each must move on in his or her respective futures.

This week, another student had his final lesson and is embarking on a new adventure as he heads off to college. At the end of his lesson, I received a gift of thanks from him:

 (The vase was a gift from my sister for my college graduation.)

On a similar note, I recently had a current student (and parent) give me a gift of fresh-caught salmon. YUM!

Gift of Friendship

Every Friday, there are a few of us who have a girls' night. I never thought that I would be one to actually have something like that. There are those shows on TV where girls are close-knit and really connect, sharing all manners of life subjects. I am not one of those. Nor have I ever been. Except, recently, I realize that I do actually have a pretty darn good group of girlfriends who I have come to really connect with and really trust (gift of trust!) and enjoy sharing time and experiences.

Unlike TV, however, our girls' night are usually fairly low-key. We cook dinner together and chat and sometimes play a game. More than likely these days, we end up doing house projects together!

This Friday, we painted some of the rooms in K's new house. And while we were dressed in our finery of cut-off jeans and old ragged t-shirts, I told those ladies that I was going on record and let them all know how much I appreciate their friendship. Because they (and several others who would be part of girls' night if they lived closer) are true friends. I know I could call on them any time for anything, no matter what.

So to E and L and K: Thanks for girls' night! It's fun anytime, even if it's painting rooms (or refinishing a deck)!

And for all my good friends out there: THANK YOU for your amazing gifts of friendship.

Gift of Love:

Throughout the week, my husband cooked every single night. That's right ladies and gentlemen, I've got a keeper! (As if there was any doubt...)

Just about the time I'd think, "I should probably pull out something for dinner...", my handsome hubby would text me and say: "I've got a dinner plan."

Oh joy! Rapture!

How doth he love me? Let me count the ways: shredded bbq beef sandwiches, shredded beef omelettes and banana macadamia nut pancakes with coconut syrup, soup with meatballs and ravioli, shredded beef tacos with avocado and garden-fresh tomatoes, and BLT croissants.

Not to mention he changed the oil in both vehicles, cleaned the garage, and put the backpacking gear away. Meanwhile he still found time to work on his master's after work and go over to my brother's to help put up a shed.

Each and every day I am honored to have this man by my side. He is constantly and consistently a gift of love to me and to others.

Gift of Thoughtfulness:

My mother is one of the most thoughtful people I know. Whenever she sees me, or "sees" me through other people visiting, she gifts me with little notes or books or whatever reminded her of me. (Along with the mail I seem to still receive there...) I got home on Saturday and found that my dad had dropped off a box of goodies from my mom. In that box, and the true inspiration for this week's blog, a book: The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

This book is chock full of quotations from the bible to Shakespeare to presidents to common sayings. It has an alphabetical index of keywords. Can't remember a full quotation or phrase, but know that it has "March" in it? Just look up that word and you find 17 quotations with "march" in it. The index gives a brief three or four word blurb so that you can decide which quotation most fits it before you look up the full quote.

GEEK OUT!

I called my mom to thank her and of course she'd responded with, "I just saw it and thought of you." :) She then told me that it caught her eye because there are often quotations in the beginning of books and she thought that I might find it helpful if I wished to do that sometime. I told her, "I actually do have a quote at the beginning of one of my novels already!"

She was pretty tickled that I'd already begun doing that and I told her that I appreciated her random, "I thought of you" gift even more.

Thanks mom! You're the best.

So to end, a quote from Percy Bysshe Shelley:

"Familiar acts are beautiful through love." (Prometheus Unbound, Act IV)

A Week in Review: It's a bug's life (Part II)

I opened the door, leash in hand. Ellie pushed past me, eager to get into the sunshine, knowing that the leash meant exercise of some kind. As she brushed past me, I noticed a rather odd sight on the door frame:

Curious, I peered at this gummy-looking thing. I had several thoughts flash through my mind, instantaneously competing with each other:

"What is that?"
"Is it real?"
"Is somebody spying on me?!" (I'd been watching a bit too much Revenge recently...)

The thing started swaying. There was no wind. Not even a tiny gust of air. And yet it slowly rocked back and forth with its beady little...fake eyes.

After the initial shock of "What the...?", I used my powers of observation (and morbid fascination) and noted that those "eyes" were clearly not real. It looked as though they were painted on (again, a fleeting thought of feeling spied on...).

At this point, I reached over to turn the handle of the door to go inside and retrieve my phone. But, ALAS! I'd already locked myself out. I hustled to get myself back into the house, not wanting to miss this strange alien creature. By the time I returned moments later...it hadn't moved. Except for its steady sway—back and forth, back and forth. I captured the above picture and then proceeded to stare at it intently.

Those eyes...

What does one do at at time like this! Why...Google of course!

With my handy-dandy phone, I popped onto Google and typed in the following:

alien caterpillar with fake eyes

Behold the power of Google! Instantly it popped up this video.

Not to be outdone, I took a video of my own:

As the caterpillar began to investigate the door frame, I investigated the caterpillar.

I went on an online hunt, seeing what else Google pulled up, website-wise, for my "alien caterpillar with fake eyes" search.

And, voila!

This alien-looking caterpillar will turn into the beautiful Tiger Swallowtail butterfly:

Though this is actually the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and not the Western.
(Photo Website Link; Western Tiger Swallowtail Info)

I'd say, that's a pretty neat find!

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And, on a poetic side note, what a great metamorphosis example for me, don't you think? :) (See A Week in Review: It's a bug's life (Part I)

A Week in Review: It's a bug's life (Part I)

Question: What does a ukulele, boudoir-themed shower crafting, and an alien-bug have in common?

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For a while now, I've been getting bugged about posting. (You know who you are, Graham.) ;)

In all honesty, I appreciate the inquiries because it forces me to think and rethink how I will manage to carve out writing time in my life. It's tricky, and it's getting trickier. The music side of my life has taken over. Just in private lessons alone, I have gone from 2 to 10 students in the course of the past six months, which is very exciting, but time-consuming. This doesn't even include all my own practice hours and symphony rehearsals and youth symphony rehearsals and master classes. But we won't go into that.

As if I didn't have enough music in my life, at the beginning of the summer I finally picked up the ukulele I bought on our honeymoon trip to Maui five years ago, dusted it off and figured out how to tune it. Then, I proceeded to teach myself how to play it, passably well, in an hour (very proud of myself for that). I took it camping that same weekend and pestered my family with it. And when I returned, I thought to myself, I should document this.

About that same time, I was working very diligently on my good friend's boudoir shower invitations and, feeling very proud of my crafts, thought that I should also share that endeavor.

That's when I starting thinking about doing a "week in review" blog wherein every week I write about something that occurred in my life that I find interesting, challenging, fun, boring, witty, snide, laughable, culpable...really...anything goes (within reason).

In my mind, as I lay in my bed at night trying to sleep, I'd draft these excellent blogs with witty comments and visual stimulants of my superb ukulele playing and crafty crafts. And by morning, I'd forgotten my wit and realized (especially this summer) that I had no time for dilly-dallying around on my blog.

Or did I?

Why did I have this new-found exploration into previously dormant (redundant, I know), facets of my creative life (i.e. ukulele playing, extensive craft-time)? And why, more importantly, was I feeling a need to share these things? The ever-sought-after social need for approval? I'm sure there's some part of me that nods in agreement to that. But, I honestly think it's more my need to write. And since I'm having a hard time editing novels at the moment, my mind is finding other avenues for me to hone my writerly instincts: 

a) I have a perpetual need to be creative. If I'm not playing my instrument or writing, I'm trying to find other avenues to express creativity. Hence the other activities.

b) When engaging in these other creative activities, I still feel that urge to write. The little blog birdie in my ear that whispers, "Write about this" is just encouraging me to find a different way to keep writing. Because the number one thing us writers need to remember (and always remind ourselves) is to just keep writing.

I love to write. And when I am not working on my novels, I get this built-up anxious feeling. My characters start to have lives of their own in my head. They answer my novel questions, but never at good times for me to sit down and capture them. 

While my novels are my first priority in my writing life, I need to be writing even when I'm not noveling (or not making the time to novel). So after a long, exhausting summer (full of very fun and exciting events), I am collecting myself once again. I am preparing for noveling by accepting that earlier this summer I was onto something with my other creative expressions and desire to write about them. I will be, like I dreamed up, making a valiant effort to do a blog entry each week: A Week in Review.

As I embark on this journey, I am hoping it will lead me down my noveling-path more easily. One can hope!

Here we go!

See: A Week in Review: It's a bug's life (Part II)

It's Marathon Time!

It seems to me that everyone these days is running half-marathons or marathons (not to mention mud-runs, rock-n-roll runs, color-runs, you-name-it runs). I can't quite decide if it's the era or the age bracket I've entered. Or both.

As a former varsity cross-country runner, one would think I'd jump on that marathon-running bandwagon. But, really, I'm not that interested in the marathon-stints. I certainly don't mind doing the Hood-to-Coast relay races and I'd probably enjoy the aforementioned runs in the parenthesis up there yonder, but the thought of marathons just makes me tired.

I will, however, be participating in a marathon this Saturday.

A marathon of words! The first annual NaNoWriMo Writing Marathon! And I can squeeze it in between my concert on Friday night and my concert on Saturday night. Woot!

Since I've been struggling to work on my novel whilst all this musicky (technical term) is going on (did I mention that my students are going to state for soprano clarinet, bass clarinet, and in a wind quintet?!), this is just one more incentive for me to keep plugging away as I attempt to balance my life. Just like I used to balance on a balance beam when I did gymnastics.

Wish me luck!

Life, Procrastination, Realization, and why a 50,000 goal isn't just for novels

I have been silent for a while on this here my blog. That's a bad sign. Why? Because it means I haven't been writing. Granted, life has gotten a bit in the way. But really that's just a way to say I'm a procrastinator.

Well shoot. I already knew that about myself. After all, I did (and do) my best work at the 11th hour (or should I say the hours between 1 and 3 am? ;) ), while burning both ends of the candle (how many metaphors can I fit into this?).

That's why NaNoWriMo is so good for me. After all: it gives me a clear and steady deadline.

This past year, I chose not to do NaNoWriMo. Not because I don't have a thousand story ideas calling out to me from the ethers of my mind (au contraire, mon ami!), but I felt I owed it to my two previous novels to really hunker down and get to some serious revising.

That lasted all of three days until...I ordered new A clarinets to test out...(*note: that is not a typo, I ordered clarinets in the key of A, as in not Bb clarinets.)

On the plus side, I have a fantastic and beautiful new instrument to play. The downside, of course, my writing greatly suffered.

So November passed in a blur of instruments,  December in a flurry of holidays with no snow, January hit and suddenly I turned a year older (seriously, how is it that 27 actually feels older?). My brother temporarily moved in with us (which totally threw off my groove) and my grandfather passed away. And forget February, that's an entirely separate beast all of its own: SOLO/ENSEMBLE. And while it was worth every minute I spent working with my students (it totally paid off! State here we come!), I found myself at the end wondering why yet another month disappeared.

I sit here now, though, fully aware that it's March. And I'm okay with that. Here's why:

A few weeks ago I realized that while I may list a thousand reasons for why I'm not working on my writing and while I may be an inherent procrastinator, here is the real truth as to why I hadn't started seriously revising:

I had absolutely no idea where to start.

I had a full-blown draft of a novel (two, actually), and every time I sat down to edit or revise or do anything besides stare at words...I just felt completely overwhelmed. In all the years of writing I took in college, in all the years I've counted myself a writer (since I was about 3...) I have never truly been taught by myself or anybody how to revise anything longer than a short story.

Thankfully, I remembered I bought Scrivener. One day I sat down and inputted my stories. I felt pretty darn pleased with myself. Days passed. That dreadful overwhelming feeling started to creep back into my system.

Then I realized something else:

I don't have to work on the entire novel at once! 

I know, I know, this seems like such a simple concept. But it's akin to realizing that I didn't have to start at the beginning either. More importantly, Scrivener is set up in such a way that I can just isolate scenes and work on sections or subsections — whatever inspires me that day.

Renewed, I finally started tampering with words. Even deleting some. Heck, today I removed an entire sentence! (It was a bit superfluous after all.) I felt so empowered, so good about how much I accomplished that I even felt I'd written something good enough to allow my husband to read one scene. And if you know anything about me and my writing, you know how incredibly private I keep it.

So there you have it folks. I'm recommitting to my writing: one scene at a time.

Meanwhile, I've also taken the idea of 50,000 words and translated it into my practice-time on my clarinet. As of last week, I start a 50,000 hour practice log countdown. It will probably take my entire lifetime to accomplish (hey, it's more realistic than using my serial number on my instrument: 633994!). But I need goals and deadlines. I thrive on those. And after only a week, I am down to 49,990.50

Moral of the story?

Well, I don't know. I haven't finished revising it yet. ;)

Read-through of NaNoWriMo 2011 novel complete! Huzzah! (Too bad that's the "easy" part...)

Thanks to a fantastic program called Scrivener, I have finished the read-through of my 2011 novel. (Yes, you and I both would have preferred the words: I have finished my novel. But novels take time.)

I am, first of all, very excited about the Scrivener writing program (and the fact that I got 50% off for being a NaNoWriMo 2011 winner certainly doesn't hurt!) With this last novel I wrote, especially, my thoughts and ideas are a bit helter-skelter. And the added fact that I have a flashback story that is interspersed throughout the novel makes organizing it a bit of a nightmare. Until Scrivener. Now I can isolate just the flashback story and read through it sans rest of novel, and then I can insert the various portions in their correct locations in a neat and orderly fashion!

As for the story itself, there are definitely some great scenes and some terrible scenes: those I wrote in fervent excitement, those I dragged from the depths of the deepest mud (and which need to return). There are brilliant character revelations as well as some flat character moments that need to be polished until the diamond in the rough can actually be "scene". (Bwahahaha.)

Overall, I like that I gave myself freedom to write whatever popped into my mind, but I think I prefer having a pre-outlined story like in NaNo 2010. If only because with this 2011 novel I will be having to finagle the chunks quite a bit to make the story completely cohesive.

While I definitely have work to do, I am pleased to see that I have some worthwhile material to mold. And, in a way, I'm equally glad that some scenes I can just throw out without shedding a tear.

Throughout all the revisions and edits, I will be learning and utilizing the various tips and tricks and organizational material provided in the Scrivener program. (It has a virtual corkboard! With different colored virtual push pins! And virtual 3 x 5 colored notecards!)

Whatever gets me through the dreaded revision stage, right? ;)

NaNoWriMo 2011 Re-read and Outline to Commence!

Last year at this time, I'd completely re-read and re-outlined my novel from NaNoWriMo 2010. This year, that stage has gone spectacularly well: I confirmed that my writing laptop has a beautiful sheen of dust.

Good thing I found my duster today!

I guess I've been slightly busy after all:  teaching, clarinetting, thinking about writing. Oh, and going on an African safari!

Yes, those are lions!

But vacation is over now, and it's time to buckle down and kick out the heel-dragger in me. After all, re-reading my first draft has to be better than The Professors' Wives' Club. (I suppose some Goodwill items were meant to stay un-purchased...)  I guess when I spend most of the time contemplating how much better I could write a particular book than actually reading it that it's time for me to get back to my own writing!