I completed the internal deadline I made myself, to finish editing a draft of Martin and The Flood before I went back to my parents for the Easter holidays.

As I read through my story again, I realised it needed another chapter at the end to make it make more sense. For the whole story, it feels like Martin is going to have an adventure, but he doesn’t, and I don’t explain why. That’s what I need to add. So far all the chapters have no titles, only numbers, but maybe the new one I write will be different.

I probably shouldn’t make it different. I feel an urge to do things differently, but I need to also just make it work.

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I have decided to teach myself the piano! I casually mentioned it to a friend a few days after deciding this, and she offered me an electric keyboard that she didn’t want! So last weekend, some of my other friends picked it up for me and now the electric keyboard is safely in my flat.

When I was a child, I started learning the trombone. After realising that I was reluctant to practice it because it was so heavy, my teacher swapped me to the trumpet. I reached my grade 6 exam and failed, and eventually lost interest in brass instruments and taught myself the guitar instead. After all, you can’t sing and play trumpet at the same time. A few years ago, I bought myself a second hand plastic trumpet (the worst kind) and tried to teach myself again. I was so laughably bad that I realised it was too much effort, and also that there had been a reason I switched to guitar in the first place. Trumpet was not for me.

I have never had any interest in learning the piano before. But I realised that I wanted to write songs like I used to on the guitar. I can no longer play guitar because I can only use one hand, but I can play around with a piano. I have no ambitions to become good. Just enjoy myself with being creative.

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I think I make hitting writing deadlines I set for myself like a game I’m playing. Editing is a kind of playing too, thinking about words and structure.

Playing the piano feels a bit like re-remembering things I’ve already learned. For me, I learnt music theory so long ago that it’s something I’m revisiting and filling in the gaps in my knowledge. Martin and The Flood is a bit like that too, pulling the story up from some half forgotten place.

Is that what creativity is? Remembering how to play? I don’t know what this all means for me, I just know it means I love the rhythm of words.
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(Featured Image is “Flood in a Music School” by Alexandra Rozenman, 2022)