{"id":67,"date":"2016-10-11T17:31:18","date_gmt":"2016-10-11T22:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/?p=67"},"modified":"2016-10-11T17:38:39","modified_gmt":"2016-10-11T22:38:39","slug":"fall-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/11\/fall-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has dawned on me that I have been largely absent for some time. The gap has not been intentional!<\/p>\n

\n

Over the summer, in addition to my full-time job, I conduct a community band. I love it. I’m passionate about it. And, more to the point, I invest a lot of myself in it. Not only do I need to be ON (volume level 10) during rehearsal, but due to the nature of the ensemble, (we’re a summer band so attendance can be spotty), I seem to spend a lot of time on it on my off days.<\/p>\n

Now, part of that is the standard that I’ve set for myself. I want to do well at this, I want people to have a positive experience, and I hope people can take away a new skill or perspective to their regular year-round ensembles: I hope for personal growth from each of the members. So I have committed to sending out the list of pieces from which my rehearsal plan is drawn within a day or two of our rehearsal. In addition, this year, I took to including discussion on some topics in music theory (for those who were interested). So it seemed I was always preparing material (in emails) for them. Finally, part of my role is setting concert order, and communicating that to our musicians in advance of the performances.<\/div>\n
I felt I put far more effort into it than I ever have, but the results were evident. It was certainly the best summer we’ve had with me at the helm. I also believe it was the best summer the band has ever had in terms of preparedness versus number of performances. Everything just seemed to gel into a really special year for us.<\/div>\n
While all this was going on, I didn’t work on my own writing. Not even a little. Of course, I was also doing a heavy amount of writing for my day job as well as the band stuff. I’ve been concerned about this, but still was not able to get myself in gear.<\/div>\n
Then, late in August, I heard that Tim Grahl’s course with Jeff Goins – The Productive Writer – was on sale. I hemmed and hawed a bit at the timing of the expense. But I’ve been following both Tim and Jeff for most of this year – I heard of them right around the time I decided to write – and I’ve been able to take advantage of some of their free resources including webinars and e-books, so I knew the quality of their product would be high. In fact, I had precisely zero doubts as to the quality – these gentlemen know their stuff and they excel at communicating it clearly. If you, dear reader, have any interest in the craft and business of writing, I would highly recommend the following websites (which I will also post in my Resources page. Mental note to me: create Resources page):<\/div>\n
\u00a0Jeff Goins: http:\/\/goinswriter.com\/<\/a><\/div>\n
Tim Grahl: http:\/\/timgrahl.com\/<\/a><\/div>\n
In the end, I decided to go for it because I expected it would invigorate me to get back to writing, and my motivation had flagged in the face of my lack of direction and apprehension\/lack of confidence. I’m now in the final week of the course and I have found it to be extremely valuable. While Tim and Jeff share their experiences and advice freely, the onus is very much on me to incorporate what I take from it into my methods in my own way, rather than them attempting to mold me (and my life) into a cookie-cutter version of an author. Tim and Jeff are very clear about what is within the scope of the course (how to focus, fit writing time in, and complete a first draft of a book in 90 days), and what is out of scope of the course (how to write).<\/div>\n
Here’s a link to the course information:<\/div>\n
\u00a0http:\/\/timgrahl.com\/productive-writer-bnetsj893phnftr\/<\/a><\/div>\n
So that’s been happening.<\/div>\n
As a result of this course, well, here’s the update on my progress: I have a plan. It’s in my head. My goal is to complete the first draft of my current novel project by the end of December.<\/div>\n
There. I’ve said it.<\/div>\n
Now, to horse –<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has dawned on me that I have been largely absent for some time. The gap has not been intentional! Over the summer, in addition to my full-time job, I conduct a community band. I love it. I’m passionate about it. And, more to the point, I invest a lot of myself in it. Not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.elizabethfrenette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}