The consequences of pitching and the pantheon of musical breakdowns

This week’s post will be a little on the shorter side because I need to ration my writing energy for Real Journalism, and there isn’t much writing energy to begin with when one is also a pianist.

Remember how I took on more work I totally didn’t have the bandwidth for by having to DIY-edit a Florence Price work? And discovered some weird things? I may have pitched a story about it to my editor at VAN Magazine, and I may have done it feeling somewhat confident that nothing would come of it because my last several pitches were rejected, and my editor may have actually come back to greenlight the story, give me a deadline, and tell me to go interview people.

In case you thought you missed something, I am not a journalist or writer by training and I have no idea how to Do a Real Journalism. I am [Rachel Weisz in The Mummy voice] A LIBRARIAN a pianist, particularly a pianist who is going back into the recording studio next week and who is trying to learn this damn piece in peace. (I am also a pianist who hates cold-calling people, so this is kind of my nightmare.) I am aware I brought this upon myself by pitching my editor in the first place, but, like telling an acquaintance “We’ll totally hang out sometime,” I thought it was just one of those pointless little social rituals where you say a thing and the other person says a thing and no one really means it!