Excuses, Excuses

I’ve started a couple of blog posts in the past month, either on the computer or in my head, that have not yet made it to publication. I have lots of excuses, of course, and a good number of them are valid. I won’t get into all of them, but instead will provide an update on what I’ve been up to lately.

Book proposal: I received some valuable feedback on my proposal from a former editor and am working on incorporating his suggestions – some of which are pretty easy to address, and a few that will take more time and thought. My new goal is to have a revised proposal ready to go to a publisher by the first week of January.

Research: I’ve spent several hours in the Minnesota History Center library recently, filling in more details about the trip the St. Cloud Senior Boys’ band took to Des Moines in 1931. This is for one of the chapters in the book, and I’ve found some great new material! I hope to write a separate blog post about my findings. Bear with me (that’s an inside joke that will make more sense when I write the blog post)! Here is a teaser:

A photo from the Des Moines Register, June 1931

Reading: I’ve read several books related to music and history, in an effort to broaden my understanding of what was happening in Minnesota in the 1920s and 1930s, and also to help me revise the comparable titles section of my book proposal. Here are some titles I’ve recently purchased through my local bookseller (thanks, Monkey See, Monkey Read!) or borrowed from the library (thanks, Northfield Public Library and SELCO interlibrary loan!):
    
• St. Paul Union Depot by John W. Diers (2013, University of Minnesota Press)
•  “A Sawdust Heart”: My Vaudeville Life in Medicine and Tent Shows, by Henry Wood, as told to Michael Fedo (2011, University of Minnesota Press)
• Creating Minnesota: A History from the Inside Out, by Annette Atkins (2008, Minnesota Historical Society Press)
• John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks Tour of Crime and Corruption in St. Paul, 1920-1936, by Paul Maccabee (1995, Minnesota Historical Society Press)

Two I haven’t gotten to yet, but are in the queue, are And There I Stood with My Piccolo, and But He Doesn’t Know the Territory, a two-part autobiography by Meredith Willson. The books were originally printed in 1948 and 1959, respectively, and were reprinted by the University of Minnesota Press in 2009.

There’s also the book on my shelf by my Vintage Band Festival comrade, St. Olaf College music professor Paul Niemisto, called Cornets & Pickaxes: Finnish Brass on the Iron Range (2013, North Wind Books). And there’s a book in the St. Olaf music library that I’d like to check out, called Discoursing Sweet Music: Brass Bands and Community Life in Turn-of-the-Century Pennsylvania, by Kenneth Kreitner (1989, University of Illinois Press).

Writing: Finding time to write is challenging, with all the work- and non-work-related tasks on my list, but I am hoping the structure of a class will help. I’m signed up to take a six-week online writing class through the Loft Literary Center from Ashley Shelby, the same person who taught my previous class on writing a book proposal. It starts the week of Nov. 4. I’m really looking forward to it because Ashley is a wonderful teacher – she’s encouraging and insightful, and as a former acquisitions editor for Penguin and a published author herself, she knows a ton about writing, editing and publishing.

Here’s a link to the class description, in case any of you blog readers are interested: “Devils in White Cities and Rising Tides: the Art of Narrative Nonfiction.”

That’s it for now. Back to your regularly scheduled internet programming!