My New Book!

 A year ago, I wrote about writing my "memoir of sorts".

I felt prompted to write a memoir of sorts, but without knowing what I would do with it. I just wanted to put my memories down on paper, to sort through some details and record them before I forgot.

But I still wasn't sure what I would do with it once it was done. Writing a memoir is scary. It's my life on paper. But at the same time, it feels pointless. I'm no one special. This isn't going to the autobiography of Julie Andrews or Ghandi or something. Who would read it?

MAYBE YOU! 

What started as a collection of memories became something much more meaningful to me. It is most definitely a way to understand me, but it is also a way to understand other people, especially people of other cultures.

So if you'd like to read my book, you can purchase it here:

On Belonging - A Memoir of an Immigrant

A New Musical - Part 4 - The Opening Number

This post is more video than writing. I feel that the video covers everything I want to say, plus cover musical things that are easier to show on a video than to describe in a paragraph. Here is the explanation video:

My little daughter interrupted me as I was filming, so here is take 2 (actually take 3 or 4) of the end of the video:

And finally, here is the song itself:

A New Musical - Part 3 - Putting It All Down

One of the most important steps in writing a musical is putting everything down in a legible form. You've seen my scribbly notes (in a previous blog post). No one is able to interpret that except me. 

So once I have the script and music in a state that I'm happy with, I start typing up the words and entering the music on Musescore. This is not very exciting (believe me) but doing this also helps me see with better clarity and make decisions on the details, like the piano part and harmonies. (Sometimes, my favorite thing to do is to just sit at a piano and sing and play, and not worry about every little note!)

To show you what this all looks like...