From the Archives: The Music of Words

A couple years ago I showed you this incredibly heavy box of music that was sitting in the middle of my kitchen. It represented over a decade of choral music collected by one of our church accompanists. In the same way as I hoard books, she hoards music, and for the same reason – it speaks

Thoughts, Words and Written Chaos

There’s nothing a writer likes better than to play with words. Sometimes — okay, maybe most times — we like the words to make some kind of sense… to resonate either with us as their creator or with potential readers. The choice of words and the order in which they are strung together determine how they affect us.

The Music of Words

This incredibly heavy box of music is sitting in the middle of my kitchen. It represents over a decade of choral music collected by one of our church accompanists. In the same way as I hoard books, she hoards music, and for the same reason – it speaks to her. She needed to downsize and

What’s to be done with the rough material?

Gravel is very useful. During our recent driveway paving project some of the old gravel needed to be removed to make way for a different grade of gravel that would form a more compact base for the asphalt. The workers were going to haul the old gravel away unless we had a use for it.

A New Notebook for Words

. A brand new notebook! I’m giddy with excitement. Am I the only one who enters a store and heads straight for the stationery department? The only one to dally and daydream over choices before moving on to pick up other more mundane items on the shopping list? I have a stack of empty notebooks

Words Old and New

The average church hymnal contains a lot of songs. For some people their words, repeated in various combinations, are considered to be dry as dust and old fashioned. Disparaging comments are made about “traditional” versus “contemporary” as if all church music can be neatly categorized as either painfully old or progressively new, without acknowledging the

Signs of Springtime

Ask people what comes to mind when they think “spring” and you’re likely to hear about longer days and daffodils, cherry blossoms and new green growth on trees and shrubs. That’s before they start thinking about pruning those trees and shrubs, cleaning gutters and dethatching winter-weary lawns. I still remember the poem I memorized in

Have You Written a Novel?

NaNoWriMo statistics are out and they’re quite remarkable. Worldwide, participation was up 40% from last year and the number of winners, those who reached the 50,000 words, was up 48%. The numbers? 167,150 participants and 32,173 winners writing a total of 2,427,190,537 words. If you’re a stats geek you’ll find all the info here. .

Glorious Colour or Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud?

With apologies to Jack Whyte (from whom I learned the song) and Flanders and Swann (who wrote the lyrics), I could think of no better title for today’s post.   There’s no getting around it. Colour affects me. I’m forever remarking on the multitude of greens in the early spring, or trying to describe the

One Piece (Word) at a Time

Last fall two trees came down on our acreage and this spring two more needed to be removed—three tall fir and hemlock trees bordering the creek plus an alder that resided in its midst. The trunks were chainsawed into chunks and transported to our driveway where the pile of wood grew to a daunting height.