Wednesday, September 07, 2011

back to school...

Current work: Rome Riva
Listening to: various
Reading: next on TBR

… and there’s definitely that September ‘new term’ nip in the air. Hope they both have a great first day back. Littlest has the same teacher she had in Y3 and is very pleased about it; son knows most of his teachers and seems happy enough, so hopefully it'll stay that way.

Great guitar lesson yesterday – I’ve been writing a song all week (shh, don’t tell my ed) but I find actually writing down the syncopation really hard. (Yeah. I know, I should simplify it all down to crotchets and quavers and not mess about with dotted stuff and ties, but… it’s how I hear it in my head.) Anyway, Jim sorted it out for me. Amazingly, I wrote it in a sensible key for once; the last one was in C minor and was too high for me to sing, but I heard the guitar (very distorted electric) and the piano and the drum line in my head, and so it had to come out that way. This one is more of a cross between Neil Young (Harvest era) and Chris Martin. Just acoustic guitar, quite choppy. (It’s what Jim calls “whiny studenty stuff” – yup. Works for me *g*.)

Changing career? No, this is what I write just for me. It’s the antithesis of my books, too; so you get a sweet voice but, um, rather sharp lyrics. I guess it’s pressure-valve stuff. The tune’s quite catchy, though, and the kids have been walking round singing it. DH thought it was about him and was a bit stroppy about it – um, no, honey, it wasn’t about you, it was about a set of attitudes that annoys me. (Which he doesn’t have, thankfully. If I wrote a song about him, it’d be along the lines of “if you don’t stop channel-hopping I’m going to confiscate the remote control”. I know it’s a guy thing, but it drives me insane!)

Righty. School run for littlest, wait in for grocery delivery, school run for eldest (Y8 onwards start late on the very first day so the Y7s get a chance to settle in, which I think is a great idea, even though it means I get two school runs on the first day of a new academic year), and then it’s just me and my dawg. I’ll miss the kids hugely, but it’ll be nice to have headspace. I can’t write love scenes when they’re in the house, and I have various places in the current MS that just says “kissing and stuff here”. LOL. Am I the only one who’s that sad?

1 comment:

Sharon Kendrick said...

I LOVE "Harvest" by Neil Young...every track is a gem. As is AFTER THE GOLD-RUSH (I've thought of everythin' from A ter Zee, oh-oh, lonesome me!")

Why don't you try to write a Christmas song, which will be an instant hit and sung world-wide into perpetuity and will earn you so much money that you have to give most of it away?

Just a thought.....(I've been trying since the year dot!) x