You may have noticed that after only two essays including an audio reading, I’ve stopped. Initially, I wanted to pair audio with every essay as an alternative to reading the essay. But over the past few weeks, partly due to an increase in workload, recording my audio became a seemingly arduous task for me. A frictional step. A barrier to entry. Not that it takes long to record, but editing my own speaking quirks and breaths (oh boy, if you only knew how great this mic was at picking up every breath. I sound like I have sinus problems.) in each clip accounted for an additional half-hour usually. And that same frictional step left me with a backlog of recordings that I had to do, even though the content was ready. Which:
- Slowed down my production schedule (at the time of writing this blog post, I have five fully written blog posts I’ve been meaning to put out, but held back due to recording procrastination)
- Became an excuse to myself of why I couldn’t produce content on the same schedule as I used to
Going forward, I’m not going to give myself that excuse. I will record audio to accompany an essay, on two conditions:
- For essays I personally really like and have time to record for
- Retroactively, if you, my readers, reach out and want an “audiobook” version of your favorite pieces on this blog. I won’t be able to fulfill every single request, although I’ll do my best to, but I’ll prioritize the ones with more requests.
So, please bear with me. The goal is still for me to read every blogpost. I’m working on being able to do all the above more efficiently. I’m testing out new formats as time allows. A couple things I’ve tried so far:
- Getting a pop filter to filter out high-pitched consonant sounds
- Finish writing before I head to bed and waking up earlier and recording at 6am
None has fully resonated just yet. And it really makes me admire the work of audio engineers and voice actors and actresses each passing day.
Stay tuned!
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