Title of This Song

This is a tribute to the four men of Da Vinci's Notebook. Actually, it isn't, but I thought it would be interesting to at least mention them once during the course of this blog. I find it interesting, however, that two of their members, Paul and Storm, have been touring with Jonathan Coulton - but I get ahead of myself.

I first heard of Coulton sometime last year when this YouTube video made its viral way into my inbox. Of course I laughed, admired his clever lyrics, and looked him up on the Internet. What impressed me most about this particular song was not necessarily the cheerful singability of the song, but instead was the fact that it was a part of a project he entitled "Thing A Week." This feed was incredibly simple; it was a song or something every week for a year.

No, seriously.

I contemplated this for a brief moment, and then laughed it off. After all, I had greater fish to fry - in 2007, I finished my masters, trained for my second degree black belt, and got married. (And then went to Tahiti, but that's a different story.)

But it really bothered me. Until I began teaching in 2003, I was a veritable fount of songs. I sat in front of a piano, a guitar, whatever, and just made music. I wrote two full musicals two years in a row. The third year, I wrote probably the strongest play in my repertoire.

And then... nothing.

I'm not absolutely sure, but I think "Surviving Cain" released in summer 2002, which, coincidentally, was the summer I got laid off. After a number of depressing months trying to find tech work, I was suddenly surprised by a position teaching at a local Christian school. Sure, I thought to myself. I should have the time to write.

What I didn't know at the time was that teaching, particularly at this school, was an all-consuming job. I spent all my time with my students or thinking about my students. I was so busy that summers were spent working summer school and basically recovering from my exhaustion. It didn't help that I was teaching four or five courses (no, I'm not kidding you - not just 4-5 classes, 4-5 courses) every year.

Then I left the position, got another position back in high tech, promptly met a man who two years later became my husband, and spent two years doing stuff that had nothing to do with writing.

This brings us to a couple of weeks ago. We just shipped our software a few weeks before, and I had spent a lot of time since then cleaning house and being exhausted just in general. The husband got a new laptop and handed the old one off to me. I took it with me to begin my Next New Novel (or at least a short story).

I spent about fifteen minutes staring at a blank document before I realized I was dry. No ideas. Nothing. Blank. I panicked. Before, I was just too tired to write. And now that I wasn't too tired, I had nothing to say.

That's when I came to my big epiphany: if I wanted to write and make a practice at it, I had to write, period. I had to write about things large and small, and I had to be willing to write crap to be able to find something that was good.

This brings us back to Jonathan Coulton. This idea of committing to write once a week is somewhat daunting, but it would force my creative juices to flow. I wanted to share that with some people, and that brings us here to this project. I really do hope I can follow through with it.

And because I've named the blog after one of their songs, here is a link to the genius that is Da Vinci's Notebook:

Title of This Song