Katrena Playing the Piano
This is the second post in a four-part series by friend and past piano student, Katrena Allison. Katrena, a lover of music is also a talented writer, keeping current with trends by regularly updating her blogs and submitting new material to various magazines and internet sites. Today’s blog takes a closer look at the discipline necessary to be a writer and musician.
Writing and Music Take Discipline
Even accomplished musicians need to practice. I remember dreading playing scales, but Dicy would patiently explain to me that these were the building blocks of future endeavors. I wanted to play the elaborate songs that I heard my brother play, but I had to begin with simple tunes that my fingers could handle. I had to listen and learn from those more accomplished that I. And I had to patiently practice. And practice. And practice
Writing also takes patience and practice. I tried to find articles and web sites to which I was drawn and decide what worked well. And I had to find a niche. I started with writing online reviews then moved to writing for an online magazine, and finally started several blogs. My early efforts resembled those simple tunes of the primary songbooks. Perhaps they showed potential, but I was not initially ready to build my own site. I had to study the rules and work within those boundaries, making sure to read the contract before signing. The early experiences taught me much about how to write for an online audience and how to slant the same topic toward several different audiences to give my research more mileage.
I also learned how to be more organized. I write my articles as a Word document and save them on my hard drive – the last thing you want is to discover that hours of work have disappeared! I copy and paste links to the sites that I use for research at the bottom of my saved pieces. I also learned to carefully organize photos that I take, creating separate folders for each season of the year and then separating the shots into their unique experiences or place photos into general folders for flowers, sky shots, exercise, etc. Hunting and pecking for links and photos or re-writing entire articles can burn a lot of precious time.
Katrena’s third guest-blog will be published Thursday, June 21 with the following topic: Mentoring Can Be Invaluable for Writers and Musicians
Check out Katrena’s blogs at the following links:
