Works in Progress

Fiorella is nothing if not consistent. She follows the same procedure for her art that she does for her writing that she does for her music.

In art, first she looks at the big picture, literally. She makes a quick sketch on the canvas to set up relationships, then splats paint on rather crudely, lights and darks--anchors for the next overlay and each succeeding overlay/adjustment until the painting is finished--although, Fio never really regards any painting as finished. Last year she repainted the mouth of a portrait she had "finished" forty years ago. (Amazing, considering that Fiorella, as she constantly informs you, is just forty-three years old.)

In writing romances, she starts with an interesting relationship and quickly writes down the general idea, then starts fleshing it out as her over-fertile imagination dictates--where the story is going and how it gets there and a few of the more dramatic stops along the way. Then she starts with the overlays. Yes, most of Fio's fiction writing is not writing, but rewriting. And this is true of her poetry too. In fact, some of you may have noted that she often goes in to her blog and edits what she was previously posted.

Fio is not a musician, but she has been practicing the piano a lot since January because she set herself the task of learning to play several carols before Christmas 2009 to entertain her Christmas guests, improve her sight reading, and ressurect some long-lost proficiency. The method will sound familiar: she chose six carols, practices them all twice a day, then adds more carols as she progresses, but playing the new ones only once a day until they are decent enough that she doesn't feel she would be wasting her time playing them twice a day. Somewhere along the line she added in "Gertrude's Dream Waltz" by Beethoven. Splat, splat, splat, then refine, refine, refine.

She treats herself the same way, always correcting, correcting, correcting, and the job is never finished.

And why is Fio telling you all this? Lord only knows. One thing for sure--she'll edit it all tomorrow.