Sneaking back into my journal

Well, it is still here, after all this time. I suppose I should tidy up the place a bit.A lot has happened since I last posted in this journal, including the start to a very busy semester and the death of my mother-in-law (she was in her nineties and had, thankfully, lived a very full life).I was the soprano soloist in a Bach cantata at Christ Church Cathedral with Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, which was lots of fun once I stopped stressing about it. The aria was quite challenging and I did not have as much time as I would have liked to work on it.I had intended this journal mainly for writing, which I have not had much time or energy to do. However, there is good news! I was accepted into a graduate-level advanced writing workshop at Butler University which has its first meeting tonight. I am so excited I can hardly stand it. I have done some short-term workshops but haven't really taking a writing class since high school, and it is about time! I submitted one short story that I wrote last summer called "Good Kitty" and a short-short called "The True Story of How I Became Real."I procrastinated and procrastinated starting a new round of novel edits because there was one change in the first chapter that I knew I wanted to make and I was scared to do it. However, once I sat down to work on it, it came more easily than I had hoped. My novel group liked the changes and now I have moved on to editing other sections. Now I remember why I needed a break, though. Once I get back into it, it is hard to get out! Yesterday I was almost late for an appointment and stayed up later than I had planned because I just could not get my head back out of the darn book. I don't want to over-tweak things, but I keep having new ideas. I am excited that I still like so much of what I wrote before, though I am finding less things to cut than I had hoped.I hope that the workshop will help me look for things I can improve upon that can be put to use right away in the editing of my novel. I have been asked to give a talk at the Central Indiana Writers' Association in July about the process of transforming the story of the ballet to a novel, during which I will show some footage of the ballet. This should be lots of fun, and I have plenty of time to decide what I am going to say.I really need to remember to update this thing more often... *spanks self*