Ever since wrapping up Road Warrior Without an Expense Account, my ten-part series on life as a classical freelance musician, I have been getting e-mails encouraging me to publish this work in book form.  Although I have been kicking this idea around in the back of my mind for some time now, my busy pace of life has prevented me from taking any action in this regard.  Over the weekend, however, I decided to finally get going on this project, knowing that I will have about six weeks (from mid-November through the end of the year) where I am basically a freelance musician (with those wonderful freelance musician mornings and afternoons off) instead of being a jack-of-all-trades performer/teacher/student/blogger/podcaster running around like a chicken with my head cut off (like I am right now).

I’ve copied all the text from these posts into Word and begun the arduous task of “debloggifying” and editing it, polishing thoughts and ideas and reworking large sections for clarity and flow.  I’m also adding charts, tables, graphs, references, resources, and the like, with the hope that this will prove to be a valuable resource for musicians.

Visiting a series that I started more than a year ago is quite interesting–I’ve definitely got a lot of editing to do to get it in publishable form.  Although I like the content from all ten parts, I feel like the quality of writing increases as the series goes on (naturally so, given all the hours I spent banging away on my laptop on related projects during the course of this series).

I’ll let folks know how this project is going–I’ve got several months of editing, proofreading, and the like to do (I’ll be working with an editor), and I’ll be sure to chime in on developments related to this project.  All the old posts will remain on the blog, but the complete book will be a reworked and expanded version of these original ten posts.

Read Road Warrior Without an Expense Account:

• Part I – Adjunct University Teaching
• Part II – Realities of Professional Freelancing
• Part III – The Rise and Fall of the Full-Time Orchestra
• Part IV – Rising Tide, Shrinking Pool
• Part V – Regional Orchestras
• Part VI – The Vicious Cycle
• Part VII – Private Teaching
• Part VIII – Burnout
• Part IX – Rethinking Music Performance Degrees
• Part X – Refocusing (Musical Entrepreneurship)