Thursday, March 1, 2012

Good Intentions 2, Me 0

I was so relieved when February was finally over that it didn't occur to me that, holy crap!, February is over already! And guess what I didn't do in the last twenty-nine days.

If you said "get laid," well . . . you're right, but that's not what I'm going for.

What I didn't do was write a clarinet solo, which was the second of my twelve resolutions for 2012.If you remember, I didn't make it through my January plans, either — and I'm still plugging away at Infinite Jest.

They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. There's an expressway to the devil's door with my name on it.

I did manage to get about eight measures sketched out — maybe 15 seconds of music — but not something I could call a song. Somehow I always expect composing to be easier than it is (especially considering this was an unaccompanied solo).

But, like reading Infinite Jest, I'm not going to give up on this one.

Time doesn't stop, so I must press onward to my March resolution, and that's to finally finish the first draft of my novel, currently called Circles. I'm currently about 40,000 words into it (though some of that is in longhand), and probably need at least another 40,000. Back in December, I thought I would work with NaNoWriMo-like focus and urgency to get this thing finished by the 31st. That is still my intention, though now I'm already a day behind.

It can be done, assuming I can figure out exactly how I want the thing to end. And assuming I can figure out how to kill one of the main characters.

Speaking of Circles, keep your eyes open here for some excerpts soon. I plan to start participating in Six Sentence Sunday to get some feedback and hopefully drum up some support and (dare I say it?) an audience.

The other important thing about March is what happens on the Ides. On the 15th, after given Caesar a few good puncture wounds over breakfast, I'll be giving an audioconference about copyediting for the Internet as part of an ongoing series of editing-related audioconferences from Copyediting.com. If you've got the desire (and the coin) to learn more about how copyediting content intended for the web is different from copyediting for print, go sign up.

Please.

As weird as it seems to me that someone would pay money to hear me talk, I promise you'll learn something.
Take that, audioconference!
Image via Wikipedia

Enhanced by Zemanta