I just finished spending about an hour recording audio for one of my books. I have two I’ve finished and submitted for approval and two more non-fiction I want to do before tackling any fiction.
One of things I was thinking about today is that audio and writing are very different in one key aspect.
With writing you can be having a bad day, feel tired, feel out of sorts, have a head cold, what-have-you. And you can still sit down in front of your computer and put new words down. Maybe they don’t flow as well as normal. Maybe they need heavier revision when you come back to them.
But you make progress. Even if all the words are junk and you went in the wrong direction, it will often help you figure out where you do want to go with the story.
So on the writing side, pushing through is what you do. Butt in chair, right? We don’t always come to the keyboard full of joy. Some days we just know we have to keep going.
Audio is the exact opposite when it comes to this. Because if you record while tired or with a bad head cold or while too distracted to deliver any emotion to what you’re reading, it’s there in your voice. And you can’t edit that.
A flat performance or one full of stomach noises can’t be fixed. It needs to be re-recorded.
At least if you want a solid performance.
So with audio it is in fact possible to waste time on bad work.
I suspect this is one of those things where the more you do it, the less bad takes you record, but just starting out know that’s an issue you’ll be facing.
And if you have a bad take? Admit it early, throw it out, and redo it. Because five minutes of audio recorded poorly costs ten minutes of time at most. But if you edit it and process it and all that? That’s more like thirty minutes spent on something you’ll still have to redo in the end.
M.L. Humphrey 