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Sunday, March 1, 2009

Give till it Hurts

I am, arguably, having a little too much success.

Once I figured out how to put together books for Podiobooks.com, I really went at it whole-hog.  In the last week, I've posted two full books to the site, and I'm hearing appreciative noises so far.  Arguably, these two books didn't take as long to complete as they might have; I'd already recorded them for one of my podcasts. 

But you'd be surprised how much editing and further recording was required to make the episodes ready (more or less) for the site.  The standards of my podcasts are my standards.  The standards of Podiobooks.com are (and of rights ought to be) much higher, and my standards for what I want there are also much higher.  What goes there will remain for some indefinite but probably very long time, and will go out to a much larger audience (I hope!) than my small efforts in my own little corner of the Interweb Toobes.  If I "podfaded" tomorrow, a rather small number of people would even know.

I still have another existing book from my own podcasts I plan to make available on Podiobooks -- a shorter book, but even so.

Add to that, there's another book I'm currently recording for the podcast, another fairly long one.  I edited the first eight podcast episodes for that into nine episodes for that site.  And tonight:

I spent two hours recording another section;

spent another two or three hours editing for the podcast version;

spent another half hour re-editing for the Podiobooks version;

and spent another half hour or so getting both versions posted to both sites.  Hopefully I didn't foul something up and just miss it because I'm so tired.

You'll note that it's 5:37 am right now, and I just finished recording.  Since I live in a house on a fairly busy street, I can't record the stories during the day and have the quality I want, due to traffic noise.  Kinda silly to record a story about the old west with the sound of modern vehicles roaring by in the background.  ;-)

In fact, I feel a bit guilty about it.  Understanding the necessity of recording at this time to minimize noise, I'm so tired now I don't feel I did as good a job at the actual reading as I might have done if I hadn't done the recording while worn out.

I don't necessarily have the same troubles with my conventional "Grizzly's Growls" podcast; that's just me right now talking about me right now.  Traffic on the street outside (while annoying) is part of where I live right now, after all.  I've even been told some of my best podcasts were recorded on my front porch, right near the street.  It's more or less an audio blog, with a few extra features.  Music, book reviews, that sort of thing.   In fact, I got interested in publishing via Podiobooks.com after reviewing quite a few books from there for my podcast.  I've come to love listening to audiobooks more than reading print books.  And as such, I feel a need to "walk the walk" after being willing to critique the recording work of others -- especially considering those folks also had to write the darn books in the first place.  That, at least, I haven't had to do.

I also feel strongly about audiobooks because of Mom.  She's the one that got me started listening to books, and learning to appreciate the better (and worse) productions of various authors and readers.  As we all get older, it's easier to turn up the CD player or MP3 player than to strain to read the print, that for some reason is much smaller than when I was in my 20's.  ;-)  So it feels like something that's needed, not just fun to do.  And because I've heard so many well-done audiobooks, from online and offline sources, and so many well-done podcasts for that matter, I feel like I have a lot to live up to.  If one wants to play among the hard working adults, it behooves one to learn to play well.

All I started to say was "I'm tired."  Now look what you made me go and do.  And why say it here?  Because I didn't get NaBloPoMo done last month, and I want to finish it this month.

I still have another five episodes to record for that incomplete book, probably over the next week or so.  It'll get done somehow.  Hopefully, knowing now I didn't do my best on that last bit, I'll be better tomorrow.

Have a good night.



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