la la la

Chorus rehearsals start tonight. Well, sort of -- one rehearsal tonight, one next Tuesday, then a three-week hiatus and then we start up again for real. The hiatus, of course, is because our director (not to mention several of our members, viz., me and my mom) will be on that trip to Montreal.

This concert cycle we're doing two pieces -- Bach's "Magnificat" and a piece called "Misa Tango" by a contemporary (i.e. still alive) Argentinean composer. As I understand it, it follows the typical Mass form in general, but it's in Spanish, and not very homophonic. I'm beginning to think that William, our director/conductor, is insane for thinking we can learn both these pieces by mid-May. It's true we got started on "Magnificat" last fall, and we learned the first chorus (which means we also learned the last chorus), but there are at least two fiendishly hard choruses left to learn -- that's "Fecit potentiam" and "Omnes generationes" -- not to mention the somewhat easier "Sicut locutus est." Plus the entire "Misa Tango."

And we have... *looks at calendar* ten Tuesday rehearsals, plus the one Saturday all-day retreat. Hmm. Well, it could happen. I can't bail, of course, because I have a trio solo. :) (This means that I and two other sopranos are doing, together, one of the pieces that Bach intended as a solo. William is experimenting with having chorus members do the solo arias in small groups, instead of hiring professional soloists.) I'm also wondering what he's planning to do about rehearsing the solos. I sure hope he's not going to start expecting us soloists to come early -- it's hard enough for me to get to Cambridge by 6:30pm! I'd rather stay late, even though that's kind of "ugh" too. Knowing William, he won't want to stay late -- he always wants to go out for dinner after rehearsals, which, by the way, I'm going to need some serious will-power to resist.

Since we're also doing the "Magnificat" on the Montreal tour, I really need to get a start on learning it. I know it fairly well, but I'm singing second soprano this time around, and I don't know that part as well as first. Eek! I gotta sit down with the CD and start practicing.

I'm also just shallow enough to hope that the three weeks of rehearsal hiatus will include new Buffy and Smallville episodes. 'Cause once rehearsals get started for real, I'm going to be missing the episodes. :( (I mean, not missing. I'll be TiVoing them, of course. But I hate not being there to watch them "live.") I know both shows have new eps next week, which I'll have to record, and there's a new Buffy but no new Smallville the following week. The week after that (March 12) is the tour, and I'm hoping Buffy will be a rerun. ;) And then March 19th is another free Tuesday, and I don't know whether the shows will be new that day. My main sources for info are tvguide.com and the TiVo listings, both of which only go two weeks into the future. *pout*

writing about thinking

There was a discussion elsewhere in lj, and unfortunately I can't point you to it because I can't remember where it was, but basically it was about people posting things on fic-lists that are not so much complete fics as snippets, drabbles, improvs, or whatever other term you want to use. That is, the author gets an idea, types a few paragraphs, gives it a title and posts it on a list, just like that.

I hate to make generalizations, so I'll qualify myself first by saying that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean, a short fic isn't bad per se. But too often it's just basically a brain-dump, glorified far beyond its merits by being called a fic.

And then, today while crawling the fic-groups to see what's new, I was reminded of another fanfic practice that I also really dislike. It's sort of related to the above. In this "genre," the author introduces the "story" by having a character sit around thinking about how much s/he loves (or, sometimes, hates) another character. Then follows a whole bunch of paragraphs which, basically, recap the plot (of the show itself) thus far. Each incident that has happened in an episode is recounted, with maybe a sentence or two added on about how our POV character feels/felt about that incident. And at the end, our POV character sits there thinking, basically, "wow, all this has happened and I really love(/hate) him/her. I wish I could tell him/her how I feel." Or something like that.

Dude, that's not a fanfic. At most, and I'm being charitable here, that's an expository essay on the history of the characters' interactions and the development of the 'ship. That's something you post to a discussion list under the header "My thoughts on this season's episodes and what they say about the [insert ship here] relationship." That's not something you post on a fic list as a completed story!

I dunno, maybe I'm just being harsh or something. And again, this is a generalization -- there's nothing inherently wrong with writing a story where you go through the episodes one-by-one and analyze how each one has furthered the 'ship. But you have to *add* something to it, you have to give it a form and a plot of your own, more than just "Character A sits around thinking about Character B." You have to make it more, in other words, than just a MightyBigTV episode summary.

I guess basically my problem is that "Character A sits around thinking" is a hard type of fanfic for me to get behind. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad (how many times have I said that now in this one post?) but it's something you really have to put a lot of care and thought into, if you're going to make it a worthwhile story. Because, too often, authors who do that type of fic seem to end up just telling us what we already know.