Wednesday, April 29, 2015

I Sound Like That?!

Lately I've been pushing out some short fiction as a way to procrastinate the finishing touches on a novel for submission; chapter summaries are the devils work. Another form of procrastination has been the involvement of a writing podcast with several friends, recording once a week for www.typehammer.com (@typehammer). No matter what you may have heard, podcasting is only just a new venture to sink cash into fancy hardware. In my case, a nice mic and headphones. Please don't listen to episode 2. My audio is frightenly bad.

What does any of this have to do with writing? Well, last weekend I had published through the #Saturdayscenes writers group a twelve hundred word story called The River. Remember that procrastination I mentioned? Well on Sunday I fired up a free copy of Audacity, sat in front of the mic and turned my short story into an audio story.

I quickly learned two things:
  1. I do not like my voice (seriously, who does? Mike Rowe, maybe?)
  2. It is a lot harder than I have given people credit for
The takeaway for me was crystal clear. It was a great way for me to review and edit my work. Reading it back, out loud, forced me to read the material in a new light and see where changes needed to be made.

What to hear my mumbling? You can hear me say w-ivver instead of river. You can also hear my iPhone let me know I have a facebook message. Should I re-record for better clarity? Probably, but I wanted to share this work in progress. Like writing, the first version is always crap.


1 comment:

  1. Eric, I just heard a tidbit, but you have a nice voice! You should definitely narrate your own audiobook if you ever have one.
    Annie

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