If you saw the movie, Julie & Julia, and I recommend it, you saw the story of two inspiring motivations for success.

I have two inspirational hits from this film. One is the inspiration of Julia Childs. She was unfocused until she enrolled in Cordon Bleu to learn to cook French cuisine. That was the pivotal action of her life.

We all need some pivot to turn from just plugging along to really making a song out of our life. (Or a fiddle tune.) You’ve heard of “find your passion.” Julia Childs found hers. Everything followed from that.

The second inspiration is Julie Powell’s goal-intention-project of preparing all the recipes in Julia’s book in one year’s time and blogging about it. The ambitious, but doable project and the one year time constraint act as a wonderful motivational goad.

I did this a few years ago when I set out to play one hundred different tunes one hundred times each. To devote this much time to a tune about twice a week was a stretch, but not completely crazy. It raised my level of playing.

I’m choosing a similar project for the coming year. The winning idea is,  Publish 100 fiddle tunes from my repertory online. Do this over the next year.

I’m off to a slow start while I learn to use Sibelius. I need to average two a week. Once I get rolling that will be doable. I expect to get caught up no later than March. [Update 8-17, I'm doing the tunes in fiddle tab. I'm not caught up. I may not get done until the middle of 2011. That's okay with me, I hope it's okay with you, too.]

My first one, 10 Penny Bit, is an Irish jig in fiddle tab to start with.Most will be in this format. They are as close to my actual performance version as possible.

Since I am an improvising fiddler, the published version can only be a temporary snapshot.

[update] Allow me to share a comment that was music to my ears:

This is great!  I decided around Thanksgiving that I would like to learn to fiddle.  I was lucky enough to have a friend who lent me their violin (as it was sitting in their closet collecting dust).  And now, thanks to your post, I have played my second song ever!

I love your tab style, it is very easy to read.  I was wondering if you could tell me which of your songs might be easier for a beginner to pick up?  I have already picked out Red River Valley and Amazing Grace because I know their tunes quite well.

Thanks so much.  Good luck completing your goal!  Nate