Although I’ve always been a person who has enjoyed expressing myself using the written word in a variety of situations and formats, in the past couple of years I’ve started writing more purposefully.
I hope to have news soon on some fiction writing I’ve been up to, but I’m so happy to share that two pieces I’ve written will be included in Blunder Woman Productions’ audiobook Nevertheless We Persisted: Tales of Loss, Love and Finding Your Own Power. One is a poem called The Box, which explores my feelings around life’s missed opportunities and roads not taken. The other is an essay called Faith which is about…faith. I’m real subtle with my titles.
I’m honored to be included in the collection and it was a no brainer that I’d be recording my pieces. Since I’m a narrator and all. These were pieces that I’d written in a workshop several years ago; before submitting them I looked them over and did a little rewriting. I didn’t do any prep to narrate them, however. I figured: I wrote them, I don’t need to read them again.
So I warmed up as usual and hopped into the studio to record them.
And then I had to eat crow.
Because, I have to make a confession here:
I’ve been all judgey for years about what I’ve seen as an erosion in the quality of copyediting in publishing (backed up, to be fair, by complaints I’d heard from writers). It just seemed like I was encountering more and more typos every book. And it wasn’t just grammatical or spelling errors I was on my high horse about: I’d roll my eyes every time I encountered a word that was repeated frequently. I’d sigh when a sentence was confusing or transitions were non-existent.
And then, I read my own words aloud.
And had to rewrite on the fly.
I was making notes, propping them up on my iPad and re-reading whole sections. Reading it aloud and rewriting it again.
See, since I hear words inside my head when I read, I thought that was the same as actually reading it aloud. I didn’t think I needed to do that. Reading one’s writing aloud was something that other people needed to do. Boy was I wrong.
After I re-recorded and re-edited and re-listened to what I’d done multiple times, I was reasonably happy with what I’d created.
And then I realized that the person editing and proofing the audiobook was going to need a written copy that they could refer to that would have something to do with what I’d recorded.
So I had to listen again, laptop on lap, and type in the changes to the text. And then email that to the editor and publisher and confess that I’d made a few changes.
Talk about bass-ackwards.
All upstream-without-a-paddle learning experiences aside, I’m still very excited to be a part of Nevertheless We Persisted. Every day the world gets a little crazier. Which for me means its even more important that the words I’m putting out there are healing in some way, lightening in some way, or make someone laugh. Hoping that this book does all three.
Keep your ears open, and you can hear it soon! If you want to support the production, or find out more about it, check out Blunder Woman Productions’ website. Or it’s blog, where the writers and narrators are being featured.
