It’s been a few months since my last update on my book on piano-playing. Here’s the latest:
- I keep going! Having printed out, read through, and edited six drafts so far. It always helps to share ideas with my students.
- A friend interested in playing piano is reading the book a few chapters at a time… this has been very helpful in motivating me to keep editing to get these chapters ready to send to her (thank you, Mimi!).
- I have started adding actual images to the book, including musical notation and symbols. This is a bigger deal than it may sound. It took me awhile to overcome resistance. It required brushing up on my skills using images on Pages, as well as learning how to work with graphics on Finale (the notation software I use).
- The ability to create annotated notation examples for teaching purposes is also helpful for my efforts to create an online course, which is also moving forward (perhaps slowly but surely).
- I have allowed myself to work in spurts, and to take breaks if needed. For instance, I didn’t work on the book for the past two weeks. Just tonight I picked it up again. Flexibility helps.
- Overall, I am feel enthused about it. I keep picturing it moving forward, and I keep enjoying working on it, as well as talking about it with my students.
- I appreciate the experience I have gained from writing an actual book. It is quite different from writing a blog post, let me tell you!