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From 5/17/10 Publisher's Marketplace: "Amy Timberlake's PIGEON-SHOT, a classic coming-of-age story about a girl's quest to unravel the mystery of her sister's disappearance in frontier-era Wisconsin was sold to Joan Slattery at Knopf Children's by Steven Malk at Writers House." Big YAY!   

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I write. My titles? That Girl Lucy Moon (Hyperion),The Dirty Cowboy (FSG), and coming soon, Pigeon-Shot (Knopf).
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Entries in Old Town School (2)

Saturday
Mar062010

songwriting as "a practice"

DateMarch 6, 2010

I've been taking songwriting classes as a way to keep my writing fresh, so last weekend I could be found at a songwriting workshop at Old Town School of Folk Music.  (By the way, I recommend doing some writing that's out of your comfort zone for keeping things fresh -- I've tried playwriting and now songwriting. I find that different disciplines approach writing in a way that is not familiar to me and I love being startled by words all over again.) 

Anyway, the instructor Lance Brown said something that I've been thinking about: He said if you wanted to take your songwriting up a notch, you needed to think of songwriting as "a practice."And he meant "a practice" in a spiritual sense (or at least that's how I took it). My understanding was that you needed to do it in a disciplined way and, like you would in any sort of spiritual practice, with an eye to the fact that the repetition of actions will be transformative for the person who engages in it. The focus being more on the person than the product.  

I've been thinking a lot about routine and discipline and the good in those things for my own writing, so this was one of those underlining life moments for me. Yes, I thought. 

[Photo: Found these old spools of thread in my grandmothers' sewing box. Aren't they beautiful?]

AuthorAmy Timberlake | CommentPost a Comment | | |
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Saturday
Feb282009

Progress: 92 pages & singing

DateFebruary 28, 2009

Phew. Finished a chapter this week.  Chapter five is officially done for this draft.  WhoHOO!  

Thoughts this week:  I doubt I can keep this pace up, but hey, why not hope?  I've definitely been praying that I'd be able to work a little faster now.

In general, I am spending more hours at my desk right now, preparing for the Charlotte Huck Festival in Redlands, California and for the church women's conference.  So my back is stiffer than usual.  There's a lot of sitting.

But here's something fun:  I've signed up for a songwriting class at Old Town School of Folk Music.  When I took a playwriting class about a year and a half ago it was one of the best things I could've done for my writing. Playwriting is not taught the same way "creative writing" is taught, so the exercises were new to me and my audience had changed: I was writing for a stage with an audience sitting in front of it.  Anyway, it was great! I felt that rush of excitement for writing again. I'm hoping for something similar with the songwriting class.  But I must admit this:  I am scared witless about singing in front of people. But I will have to do it.  How can you share a song if there's no singing?

[Photo: I considered another photo of the stack, but that's getting boring -- at least until the stack looks like something.  So here's an unfinished portrait that hangs in my office.  It was painted by my great, great aunt, Margaret Richardson.  I like her.  She knows things and knows she knows things and likes books.] 

AuthorAmy Timberlake | CommentPost a Comment | | |
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