Everyone is different; our bodies react to weather, stress, and fatigue in different ways. So my experience isn’t the same as everyone else’s.
August sucks for me. Especially weeks like this week, where we had high temperatures and high pollen count. Despite living indoors with air conditioning, the heat and pollen still affect me. It means I can’t sleep very well (up every 20-30 minutes), can’t breath very well, and generally feel crappy.
I think the worse part of poor sleep, allergies, and feeling crappy; is that it makes everything seem worse and hopeless. This isn’t new, but I always forget. In the future, I should probably plan trips around this time to keep me moving and not thinking.
I crashed yesterday and snapped at my wife for something that wasn’t her fault (Sorry).
It’s a vicious cycle of feeling like I should be doing more and not having any energy to do it. So when I take time to rest or relax, I then feel guilty and that makes me feel depressed and anxious.
At least the kids are liking the weather. Here’s a cute picture of them playing on the splash mat in our backyard.
Once the heat breaks, I’ll start feeling a little better. Until then, I have to keep reminding myself that it’s okay to take time to recover and not to feel guilty about it.
One of the first things we did when writing this book was build a 2002 playlist.
I had already started writing my first chapter, and Kennedy had entered a bakery. I thought, shouldn’t there be music playing? What music would have been popular in September 2002?
Cue a post on Facebook asking about our friends’ favourite artists from twenty years ago. (Twenty? What?)
We bought a bunch of CDs to supplement what we already owned, and built an epic playlist to listen to while we wrote to add atmosphere. An entire scene in chapter 5 wouldn’t have been there without this playlist.
Bands and artists we listened to, in alphabetical order:
Alanis Morissette, Alicia Keys, Aqua, Avril Lavigne, Barenaked Ladies, Bloodhound Gang, Britney Spears, Bryan Adams, Cake, Celine Dion, Cher, Christina Aguilera, Chumbawumba, Coldplay, Creed, Daniel Bélanger, Dave Matthews Band, David Usher, Destiny’s Child, Enrique Iglesias, Enya, Éric Lapointe, Evanescence, Faith Hill, Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack, Flogging Molly, Foo Fighters, Garou, Goo Goo Dolls, Great Big Sea, Green Day, Jagged Edge, Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Page, Jewel, Kevin Parent, Len, Live, Macy Gray, Meatloaf, Midday Blackout, Natasha St-Pierre, Nelly, Nelly Furtado, Nickelback, Nightwish, Nine Inch Nails, Norah Jones, Pearl Jam, Phil Collins, P!nk, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Reel Big Fish, REM, Remy Shand, Ricky Martin, Robbie Williams, Rush, S Club 7, Sarah McLachlan, Savage Garden, Seal, Shakira, Sheryl Crow, Sky, Smashmouth, Spice Girls, Sum 41, Tea Party, Third Eye Blind, U2, Vanessa Carlton
One last shot of Walt Disney Studios in Disneyland Paris. I hope you enjoyed pictures from our trip to Paris in April 2018! Next up are our Disney World pictures from January 2017 with a tiny baby Dragon. Watch out for those next week!
I played the riff I was having trouble with yesterday for the entire practice session today. I’m doing no better than I was when I started today.
Sigh.
I played the tabs I came up with for my song yesterday and while I still like them, I don’t feel like my singing went with them very well today.
I think I’m just feeling less productive overall today.
My fingers hurt.
Here’s hoping for a better day tomorrow.
July 8: Melody
I succeeded at that last riff!! On my first try today! Big surge of adrenaline after that!
Then I moved on to learning melody lines.
Apparently it’s a lot more pressing on strings because ouch my fingers hurt!
I did not pass the first melody.
Tomorrow is a new day.
I played my song (the first verse) and I’m in love with it again today. I need more practice to make sure I hit the right strings, but it’s coming along.
July 9: technical issues resolved
So I finally figured out why my phone wasn’t registering my notes properly… My sound was up too high. So it couldn’t hear my playing properly! And I thought that I wasn’t playing right!
So I ripped through 3-4 melody lessons and got 3 gold stars on almost every part today once I turned my phone’s sound down.
Then I listened to the first lesson on chords but couldn’t do the prescribed because I refuse to upgrade my account to get more practice time.
My fingers hurt, but I’m so exhilarated from doing well in today’s lesson that I don’t care.
Then I played my song. The first verse is sounding more natural, which makes me happy.
So I moved on to the second verse. The lines aren’t the same number of beats, so it’s going to need some adjusting. I can’t change the words too much because the character is supposed to have scribbled them down in half an hour and it’s supposed to be super rough, but I might have to modify them a bit if I can’t get the music to sound right.
Then I played the bridge and it sounds decent currently, so we’ll see how that goes.
I’m excited to start learning chords so I can put them to the chorus!
A note about me learning guitar
Something I haven’t really mentioned on here about when I go to practice the guitar…
I go to the basement.
Not to get away from the family, but because my son tries to tune the guitar while I’m playing it and refuses to listen to the word “no”.
He’s only 2. He’ll learn soon, right?
But every day, I encourage my daughter to come with me. (She’s always excited to join me… So far.) She’s almost 5. And she hates not being perfect at something on her first try.
So I’m not making a huge deal about it, but I talk out loud to myself. If I get something first try, I celebrate it. IfWhen I don’t get it, I say something like, “wow, that was hard! I’m going to need to practice that.”
And I talk to my husband about my feelings about my lessons in front of her, saying, “I feel like I should be further along because I used to play flute, and it’s frustrating to be going at such a slow pace. But I want to do this properly and I don’t want to skip steps.”
I’m hoping that she sees and hears that this is taking a lot of time, that I’m working really hard at it, and that I’m making a LOT of mistakes as I go.
Nobody’s perfect at something the first try. It takes a lot of time and effort to master an instrument (or reading, math, printing, drawing, colouring, etc).
If she refuses to listen when I tell her that, let her learn by example.
I hope.
July 10: I need to cut my fingernails again
I learned 3 chords today: Em, E, and Am.
My fingers hurt so much from pressing on the strings that I wasn’t able to do more than a ten minute lesson.
And my fingernails need trimming again because I’m not using the tips of my fingers, so it’s harder to put my fingers in the proper places.
When I tried learning guitar two decades ago, I bit my nails all the time, so I didn’t have this problem.
It’s kinda frustrating.
I played my song again and I fixed the notes for the bridge. I’m much happier with it now.
And I don’t think I need to change the lyrics to make the lines shorter, I just need to speed up the singing. (If that makes sense).
One good thing about writing the music for this is that I’m getting slightly more confident with singing. Hopefully I’ll be fully confident by the time I need to perform it.
I’m excited to see progress.
July 10 Part 2
I’ve started re-teaching myself scales so that chords make more sense to me.
A hand-drawn guitar with each fret labelled is on the left. On the right are several chord names with the fingering and corresponding music notes, along with the scale and the triad.
It’s really strange, because it’s been so long since I last thought about this stuff, that I’m starting from scratch. But I kinda remember it. But not really.
So. It’s strange.
Song update
I recorded the lyrics at my first attempt at setting down the melody line.
They are so far from perfect it’s not even funny.
Like, I messed up on the second line of the first verse and on the third line of the bridge. The third line of the bridge is my favourite!!
However, I feel like I have made a good start.
I’ll be recording the lyrics again after I listen to it a bunch of times.
Ugh, listening to myself.
*shudder*
But that’s how I learn a song the best… Listening to it over and over.
Hopefully I won’t ingrain the wrong tune in my head for those two lines!!
And then I get to try to figure out the guitar to go along with it…
That’ll be interesting.
Am I doing this backwards? Lyrics-learn guitar-learn how to write music-write music for guitar?
I mean, I suppose it could be MORE backwards!
July 11: chords are hard
Today’s lesson was all about switching between Em and Am. I did not do very well. I’m not sure if it was me missing the strings or me strumming poorly.
Probably a combination of both.
So today my fingers hurt and my wrist hurts (left hand).
I played my song. I think it’s going alright. I think I like A major for the initial chord for the chorus. I’m tempted to just use it all the way through, but I’m sure I’ll figure out a better progression than that!
I also think I should try a key change for the bridge and final chorus… We’ll see how things go.
Small businesses and musicians have something in common, they start planning for the holiday season in August and September.
That means that we are slowly planning this years JenEric Coffee Advent Calendars.
So this is the time that we ask you to let us know what you’d like to see in this years Coffee Advent Calendar. Let us know what your favourite flavours were from last year? Did you want more options?
On the surface, this seems like a straight adaptation of the book, but there are a lot of small subtle changes to adapt it to a 2002 audience. Mostly we see it in the way that the main character views the world. Instead of the naive, wide-eyed boy of the book, we get a sullen bad boy wannabe. Both are rutted in a childhood ignorance that mirrors when they were written.
The rest of the changes are just as clever and make the whole movie work in a way that seems improbable, but is quite lovely.
I find it interesting that in the book, we discover that the dad was killed to hide the treasure and that Silver knew him, but that story line is completely dropped in this version. Again, probably a sign of the times, in that an audience for the book would be shocked at a dad who just left instead of dying at sea, while more modern audiences wouldn’t blink an eye.
Score: 1
Characters
The protagonist is just the right level of innocent, sullen, and clever to make him likeable. The rest of the characters range from cartoony to downright terrifying. It’s impressive that the movie can have such a range without it feeling jarring.
Score: 1
Dialogue
The blend of pirate/sea talk, modern dialogue, and science fiction speak is fantastic. It’s at the perfect level to be understandable to anyone yet still have little nods to the original and science fiction movies.
Score: 1
Visuals and music
The blending of animation techniques works so well that despite the early 3D animation this is still absolutely stunning. From the textures to the starscapes, everything looks amazing. The 3D is used extremely well for shots that just would be impossible in traditional animation.
The music is a nice mix of early 2000’s, epic science fiction, and pirate movie.
Score: 1
Fun
I enjoyed the movie and always love the nuances of the characters. My 2 year repeated the title and ‘cook’ for the first half. Not sure why, but he still watched. My four year old loved it.
Score: 1
Overall
The movie has all the buckle and swash you’d want with just a nice pinch of science fiction cleverness. Definitely one of the most underrated Disney movies.
If you enjoy pirates in space, this is the movie for you.
Final Score: 5 Stars out of 5*
*A 5 star review doesn’t mean the movie was perfect nor that it is perfect for everyone but it is a movie I believe is as close to perfect as possible.
As you may have read in yesterday’s post, the book Jen and I wrote in winter 2021 has been accepted by a publisher. Renaissance Press is growing fast, lots of amazing authors, anthologies, and books. I wasn’t sure they’d have room for us.
This is going to be my 7th book (Book six Coffee Shop Between the ‘Verses comes out on September 15th.) and I’m always nervous about submitting. This is the first novel that I’ve submitted only to Renaissance, normally I go through the motions of sending them to agents, editors, and contests. I submitted Everdome to a dozen agents and twice as many companies. I received two nice rejections and a lot of silence. I realize that’s what it’s like to be an author. So glad Renaissance accepted this book and that we didn’t need to try to get it out to other, less open, publishers.
One of the joys of this book is the enthusiasm and excitement of my co-author. Her enthusiasm keeps me on track and excited while her excellent writing forces me to up my game. We each have strengths that compliment each other.
I assumed it would be very easy to tell who wrote what parts, but our styles must mesh well because most of our beta readers couldn’t tell which sections were mine and which were hers. I think that’s really cool and I look forward to writing more with her.
Now that this book has a contract we’re hoping to start work on the sequel soon. I’d like to get a little further into Elizabeth 4, which is taking me forever. So I’m hoping mid September or early October. Meanwhile, Jen has started a spin-off novel and we’ve written a short story collection.
Things are about to get really hectic here. Dragon and Jen have decided that it’s best for the kid to go to digital school full time in the Fall. That means a complete change in bedtime schedule for both kids. I foresee a lot of meltdowns and lack of sleep in late August and early September and that’s just for me.
Hopefully we’ll all be vaccinated by Christmas and Dragon can do her last semester of Kindergarten in person.
Pardon me while I interrupt your regularly scheduled posts to inform you that…
Drum roll, please!
Assassins! Accidental Matchmakers has been picked up by Renaissance Press for publishing! It will be published in Fall 2022 (twenty years after its setting).
We are so ridiculously excited about this, you have no idea!!
Our family wearing different coloured shirts that all say “Assassins! Accidental Matchmakers”
I wrote lyrics for a song in a novella in Stories! The Unexpected First Collection. Now I’m planning to write the music. Only one problem…
I don’t remember how to write music. Or play guitar. So I’ve asked my dad to reteach me guitar.
Let’s hope this goes well!
I’ve been journalling my progress on Tumblr, but since barely anybody I know has my Tumblr, I decided that it would make a good series of posts on our blog for the month of August.
I started on June 29th, when my dad let me borrow his guitar. I’ve been using an app called Yousician, not on premium (which means I get 30 minutes of practice time per day and limited song options. That really isn’t a problem for me.)
June 29
I had my first lesson today.
I forgot how much pressing on the strings hurts my fingers.
I’m starting from scratch because I was never really taught before; my dad showed me some of the chords and that was it. So I’m learning about tabs.
And how to tune!
The first lesson was tuning and playing the 6th string open (not touching the string). Then I learned about frets 1, 2, and 3 and how to play them with changing fingers.
My index finger is so sore.
I want to learn more!!!!!!!
June 30
I remembered to take a picture today!
I am wearing a pink shirt that reads “Assassins! Accidental Matchmakers” and holding a guitar. My daughter is next to me. Behind her is the guitar’s case.
Dragon has been learning how to read the tabs along with me and is talking about them properly.
I love it.
I need a lot of practice.
July 3
I learned what riffs are yesterday.
Today, my head was spinning because I got my second dose of Moderna yesterday, so I didn’t continue with lessons; instead, I tried to play Dust in the Wind by Kansas with chords. It’s a lot harder than I remember it being.
And my fingers still hurt from pressing on the strings.
But it was nice to play something that actually sounded a little bit like something.
July 4
I played two songs as riffs today. The second one, I only made one mistake!
I’m very proud of myself.
Then I tried playing Dust in the Wind by Kansas again. I had to completely relearn the chords, but they came quicker today, which was nice.
My fingers still hurt from pressing on the strings.
And the rest of my body hurts from holding it in an awkward position.
Hopefully I’ll get stronger, both in my back and in my fingers.
July 6: I’m darn proud of myself for today
I forgot to play yesterday. I had a pretty bad headache, so I was going to just do the left hand, but I completely forgot.
Today, I went back a couple lessons and tried to do the first couple songs again. I did better, but I still need practice.
Then I moved on and did two new riffs (twice each), and I did very well with them. The third riff was very hard and my fingers were very tired, so I did not do very well at all. It was kinda funny, actually. I’ll try it again tomorrow.
I’ve been paying more attention to the background music of the songs I like to listen to, and I’ve noticed that the music doesn’t always change notes/chords when the voice changes.
That’s probably not news to a lot of people.
But I played flute in band (a long time ago) and I’m a soprano (ish), so I’ve almost always had the melody line.
So I never really paid attention to what the background music was doing. I know about harmonies of course, but that’s not the same thing.
Anyways, my point is.
My point is…
I think I kinda know how to plan out the music part of the song I wrote.
At least, I wrote the tabs for the first verse today. I’m pretty happy with it. It’ll probably undergo changes as I learn more, but for now, I’m pretty thrilled with it.
And it doesn’t change on every note.
Now I just need to practice more and learn chords so that I can write the music for the chorus (because I want the chorus to be richer in sound than the verses and bridge… At least, that’s what I’m thinking right now.)
Also, I need to become more confident in my singing. I could barely hear myself over the guitar.
But today was the first day I felt like I was making progress.
