Audiobook Experiment Part 3: Progress and sh*t!

I’ve hit a major milestone in making Envy and the Geek into an audiobook: I finished a full first-pass recording! In other words: I’ve read the whole damn book aloud, into a mic. And I honestly don't think I could have done much better. Of course, there is always room for improvement, but I'm satisfied that I did my current best.

Does that mean I'm done and ready to share it with the world? Oh hell no! I have started editing (9 chapters down 16 to go!) but when I'm done with that I will still have to go back for pickups, another round of proofing, and then the final editing/exporting before it can be presented to the powers that be (aka ACX). So there is much left to be done, but the progress I've made feels substantial and I am proud of it. So there.

I have to give a shout-out to my two biggest motivators: my wife and, well, myself. First, my wonderful wife, Kristin. She's been super encouraging. She claims to actually enjoy listening to me read my books! (What?!) And since she hadn’t read Envy yet, once she started listening, she was always chomping at the bit for me to get more done so that she could hear it. That was such positive motivation. Thanks, love!

My other motivator was me, but not in the positive sense, more of the "omg l suck, wtf" sense. Unfortunately, as I read, I found things I wanted to change. Ughhhh. The plague of the self-published author. Naturally, I wanted to make the changes right away for my print readers, but there was no point in updating the manuscript until I had read through the whole damn thing enough times to get the recordings finished. So those are finished and the fixes have been made and hopefully, by the time my next convention rolls around (CONvergence in August), I will have a stock of copies that will feel more polished and shiny. (For the record, there are no substantial changes. Just a bunch of little bullshit.)

I am optimistic that—if I can prod myself into a few more super productive days—I’ll actually finish this audiobook. Fortunately, the editing is easy, if tedious. Unfortunately, Narrator-Ali is kind of an asshole to Tech-Ali. Narrator-Ali thinks “fix it in post” is a good idea. Professionals and people who are nice to the audio techs should not do this, but as I am my own audio tech, I get to be a jerk. So now my “fuck you, Tech-Ali, suck it up and edit out my bullshit” chickens are coming home to roost. But that's okay; on the bright side, I am compiling an entertaining blooper reel. Maybe I'll share it sometime. Stay tuned!