North Hollywood, California
We finally got some news yesterday that we've been waiting for since March! I still can't go into it, as it all needs to be confirmed, but it's a lot closer to materializing than it was even 48 hours ago...hallelujah! Something about getting this news and finally having the bowling ball removed from my stomach seemed to have removed a block I'd been having...specifically regarding adding the last two lines for It's In My Nature. I know I was working on it 4 weeks ago, but I got stuck and pretty well remained stuck. Every time I tried to think about it, my brain just locked up. Of course, part of that is due to my job. Yet, once we got our news...well, again, I was taking a bath, getting ready for work...I wasn't even thinking about the song, really. And suddenly the perfect lyrics popped into my head. It was kind of like, "Why didn't I think of that before?", but I could also tell that it wasn't meant to come until that moment. I'm just glad I can finally remove that from my plate - especially with more things being added to it as we speak!

Despite having to give up a lot of time for school and church work, Leo's really made a lot of progress on the demo this week. We're supposed to start recording the vocals and percussion next week, although I don't know exactly when. What this means for me - aside from juggling my work schedule so I can be there (and they're just going to have to understand!) - is having to go through each song to notate who's going to "play" who, not to mention determine what's not just "simple" singing - there's a good deal of dialogue and sort of half-spoken/half-sung things that need to be delivered correctly, and it's not immediately obvious in the libretto which is which. That, and I'm going to have to do a bit of directing during these recording sessions. All of which ought to be interesting!

I'm also seeing that I'm going to have to do a major rewrite this summer. Some of the songs are turning out to be longer than I envisioned. While I think some of them could be shortened, that's going to involve more lyrical changes from me...other songs need to be as long as they need to be, which means having take dialogue out of other scenes. I intentionally wrote the libretto with a lot of layers, but if I don't thin it out a bit the show will be way too long...and, as the months pass by and I've had a chance to sit with the initial draft, I'm seeing plenty of places where things could be tightened. But I think it'll be July before I can get to that, once...well, I'm not going to tell you right now! :) Believe me - when the time is right, I'll tell all!

Also this summer, we'll have to start filming things for the screen which can only be filmed in summer. The interiors won't matter, of course...but every outdoor scene has to be filmed in the appropriate season - and I purposely wanted to reflect each season, since even Maud didn't live in pastoral spring and summer environs all the time. There's really only three major sequences I can think of that have to be done this summer - possibly four - but, since I've noticed that the leaves start to change already in late August, we're going to have to get this footage in early August...mid-August at the latest. Of course, that's only 3 months away...!

Lots of 9LoLMM stuff happening right now...and lots more coming...so stay tuned!