Grooving while the novel packs its bags

This is my current listening - a NZ band headed by novelist Damien Wilkins. I tend to exhaust CDs - play them over and over song by song until I've 'got' them. I am giving the song Iris DeMent a good run for its money - love those opening lines about making mistakes and making them all over again. It's a nice mix of anthem-to-live-by and demented (heh! heh!) gothic tale - but Damien himself sounds like James Taylor crossed with Neil Finn with perhaps a smidgin of Wayne Mason? More on The Close Readers here.

I'm also enjoying forays into two CDs 'mixed' for me by my friend David Cohen with one song for every year of my life. There are 50 songs! Including this one (love that it's a 'folk song' - it was written for a Pink Batts commercial) and the song at the bottom of the post which was my 'theme tune' in a version of 'The Inspector Calls' - I wore a dress so tight I could hardly breathe. Needless to say there are other such gems.

And I need all the music I can get because I am finally finishing off my children's novel. It is all down on paper - from beginning to end - with some last minute editing, then it goes to 'close readers'. What is it about this part of the process that makes me feel unhinged?

It's letting the thing out, after all the thinking and time and work. It's about being terrified that it's not what I think (hope) it is. Great how a song can cheer you up....