La Bene Vita

Friday

I finished Brisingr today. I have mixed feelings about Paolini's descriptive writing. It's an interesting case study in how action verbs keep even a setting description moving:

"Hundreds of feet below Tronjheim, the stone opened up into a cavern thousands of feet long with a still black lake of unknown depth along one side and a marble shore on the other. Brown and ivory stalactites dripped from the ceiling, while stalagmites stabbed upward from the ground, and in places the two joined to form bulging pillars thicker around than even the largest trees in Du Weldenvarden. Scattered among the pillars were mounds of compost studded with mushrooms, as well as three-and-twenty low stone huts. A flameless lantern glowed iron red next to each of their doors. Beyond the reach of the lanterns, shadows abounded.

Inside one of the huts, Eragon sat..."

...and we finally get back to action on the part of the character.

The action verbiage does keep the description moving: stone OPENED, stalactites DRIPPED, stalagmites STABBED, the two JOINED, lantern GLOWED, shadows ABOUNDED. Very well done. However, the plot isn't even taking place outside of the hut, so I wonder how necessary the description is. The lake of unknown depth, the marble shore, the thick pillars, and the mounds of compost never enter into the story. Is an assassin waiting behind one of those pillars? Are we going to cross the lake by boat? I'm amazed by the pictures his descriptions paint in my head, but they slow the story wayyyy down. And, frankly, I would like him to allow me some imaginative license.

That said, I teared up a little at the end of Brisingr, which means Paolini hit a home run with his characterization.

Reach 300 students at MTMS   by 12/31/11.
We reached 200, then we dropped instantaneously down to 18x. This was not the result of a flurry of withdrawals, but rather a change in the way we counted certain students. If a student had an extended lesson, which is double the time with the instructor, we counted them as two students. But the lesson was really 60 minutes instead of 40. That was just an extended lesson for a single instrument - say you wanted a 60-minute voice lesson instead of a 40-minute voice lesson. Now, by consensus among the staff, we added a new extended lesson product that we think will be wildly successful - a multi-instrument extended lesson. Now, if you want to study voice AND piano, you can do it in a 60-minute lesson and pay the extended lesson rate instead of paying for two separate lessons. I agreed to the change on the condition that we change the way we count extended lessons to 1.5 instead of 2, which affects the staff goals, but also more accurately reflects our budget situation. Although it immediately dropped our numbers by about 10%, it also made for a really easy up-sell, and we've sold the extended lesson to several existing students and a couple new students just this week alone. We're back up to 195.

And climbing. We has a smart staff, yes, we has. Suppose I'll keep 'em.

Reading: One book per week.
It took much more than a week, but I finished Brisingr. I'm on a fantasy kick now, and I have a series by Jane Yolen, the first book of which is entitled Dragon's Blood. I don't remember if it was recommended, or if I just bought it because it has a shiny cover with interesting artwork. It looks like a youth novel and an easy read.

Writing:
(1) Blog at MT.com   by the end of Wednesday: At least, I blogged recently enough.

(2) 30 minutes of daily freestyle writing: While cleaning out desk drawers and old planners, I found some writing dating back to a rough patch in 2005. Am I the only one who writes angry rants directed at other people, speeches I wished at the time to deliver directly to the recipients, but which I committed to paper instead, probably out of some deep-rooted wisdom? I read the rants now and realize how stupid I would have sounded, had I yelled the words instead of writing and hiding them. The rants ended up in yesterday's shred pile. One or two song seeds survived the shredding, though it may be awhile before I do anything with them. For the time being, they're stored in my "Muse Spews" journal.

Count points:
1 Coffee
4 ZonePerfect bar
2.5 Turkey kielbasa