Well, all sorts of work avalanche would be more accurate! All of a sudden I find myself with two client website projects to work on (one due in a week’s time. No, I’m not stressed. No, not at all. Who me?), one website for Djeli’s super-secret project which he wants done by the end of the weekend but hasn’t yet written the text for, shiny new step-motherhood to deal with, an orchestral work to keep working on, actual homework this time for my composition lessons, not to mention all the training stuff that’s underway – BUSY! But great-busy. Really enjoying all of it and finding it easier to keep focused because I *am* enjoying all of it, even if a couple of deadlines are a little more deadliney than is strictly comfortable.

I’ve been doing the Authority Rules conference run by Copyblogger over the past couple of weeks, and it’s been fantastic. Actually way more interesting and useful than I ever thought it would be, and SO worth the money. It’s particularly interesting because it’s making me think in new ways about all my endeavours. One of the things they’ve been talking about is about finding your ‘right people’ and putting up  a ‘red velvet rope’ so that only your right people are the ones you work with – because they’re the sort of clients who bring out the best work in you and who you’re happiest and most fired-up to work with. And it makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of the trouble I had with thinking about running my own business before was because I was thinking generically “helping small businesses make websites that actually work for them” whereas the people I relate to best, enjoy working with the most and probably can help the most effectively are creative types. And that makes such a huge difference. So the projects I have now are for a violinist here in the UK and a Pilates studio in Australia, and it’s great. I’m really enjoying working on these, and I can’t wait for them to see a big difference once their new sites are launched.

Carrion Comfort is slowly slinking forwards. It really made such a huge difference to ditch the vocal part for a trumpet – it was what it really wanted. Now I’ve been cleaning some things up and I think I have the beginning of the next bit, but it’s been feeling structurally stalled a little bit. In today’s lesson my tutor has suggested I take my initial theme, pull it out of the piece and just mess about with it seeing how many different permutations I can come up with and then seeing if any of them might be useful in the piece, but without pressure to produce something that will be, or expectation of same. I’m liking this idea and looking forward to being able to do something on that over the weekend. He played me part of the second movement of Andrzej Panufnik’s Violin Concerto [sorry – it’ll start playing at you as soon as you click that link] as an example of what can be done with a simple interval (it’s basically just constructed out of thirds!). Absolutely gorgeous. I’d love to hear the whole of it, but alas, the excerpt linked to there is the only thing I can find online without buying an entire CD or signing up to emusic’s subscription plan. Which I may do anyway but good golly it’s been frustrating! And all the more so as there ARE recordings. Menuhin recorded it in the 70s, and EMI seems to have a fairly current recording on their books, but it’s nowhere to be found in the online music stores! Even iTunes, which I consider a last resort because I object to DRM on principle, had a bunch of other Panufnik stuff but the only Violin Concerto bit was the third movement! Ack! Hmm. Well, grateful for small mercies. It’s still beautiful, even in just that snippet.