4/2 week in review

3/29

It was raining today, so I spent my free time editing audio.  It's slow-going, though.
I intended to hit the library and get at least a few words written, but it was my turn to take my nephew to his volleyball game, and afterward, I took him out to get tacos (I think I did last week too). 

It occurred to me that I could still salvage this, if I do sit-ups and/or push-ups tonight.  I did both for a full year, I can do them on a single night.

I did end up doing both push-ups and sit-ups at about quarter-to-three, just like I used to do.  And it wasn't pleasant, but it was hardly fatal.

3/30

So, I finished "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett.  Anticipating finishing it this week sometime, I had grabbed another audiobook from the library over a month ago, but I ended up having to return it, as somebody else reserved it.  So, I grabbed a Leigh Bardugo book off the shelf, and tried my best to get into it, but I couldn't access it (if that's the word I'm looking for), even unable to tell you the name of the main character.

Luckily, I had to return Follett's book today, so I strived to grab a replacement.  I'm sure there are a dozen books I have considered getting over the last months, but didn't because I had a giant epic on my hands, but today, I couldn't find anything I wanted.  Maybe "Lord of the Flies" by Golding (which I've already read, but really enjoyed).

I'm now sitting here typing this instead of writing, which is sad, since I didn't write a single word yesterday, and regretted it.

3/31

As an audiobook narrator, I don't have (much) say in the lines I'm given to read.  Just today, I was editing myself saying the line "Years and years of everyone dropping their piss and shit down into the Bay until they made them stop?  We're probably under ten tons of sewage, or worse."  That took a few takes, and I never did get it sounding natural.

I've mentioned before about "He hesitated" being a simple sentence I can never quite make sound right.

Also, in the book I'm recording for Abbie, I have many, many lines of dialogue prefaced with "Roup laughed" or "Halvery laughed uneasily."  Back when I first did the Dunesteef show, I would actually laugh after a direction like that, then deliver the line, but now, I try to incorporate the sound of amusement into my dialogue reading.  I'm not saying that's better, but it's what the work has evolved into.  Devolved?

 4/1

I finished Abbie's book proper and now have to just do relines, the author's notes, and the bonus story.  I thought, as a breather, I should do one of my own stories, so I'd have a fudgin' episode of my podcast in the near(ish) future.  So I picked (for future reasons) a story I wrote in 2008 called "I'm Wishing," which I believe was the last story swap Big and I did before we started podcasting.  I was a bit surprised to discover that it was written under a pseudonym, and didn't realize until later that that was because I was trying to write a nastier, less naive story involving crime and drugs.

I also didn't realize until I got near to the end that boy, it was just not a good story.  There was a reason I didn't dare stick my own name on this one.

I had planned on running "I'm Wishing" as an episode of the Outcast, because the premise is very similar to the most recent story(ies) I completed this year, which I also figured I would share.  But halfway through, I thought, "Huh, maybe I'll just include this for the Patreon supporters, since they're big enough fans not to rage-quit the show after a story like this."  But by the time I got to the end, I didn't think I should share it at all.

I did record the story, though, so I'll include it in the next collection (or the one after that), so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

I vaguely remember reading in that book about "The Twilight Zone" that Rod Serling had been trying to get the show made for some time, and hence had gathered quite a collection of stories and ideas and other people's tales that might make for good episodes.  Since, in those days, shows would run for thirty or more episodes a season, that was an awful lot of ideas.

I have ideas for stories literally every single week.  If I were a much, much cooler man, and wrote a story a week, it STILL wouldn't account for all the ideas that pop in my head.  Just today, Big Anklevich lost his cat, and his now-forty-five year old youngest son was distraught about it.*  So Big printed up some LOST CAT signs, including a photo and description of the cat, and went around the neighborhood, taping them up.

And he got to a bus stop, started to put up the Lost Cat sign . . . and discovered there already was a Lost Cat sign there.  It was for somebody else's cat, but the description was almost exactly the same.  What was worse, the photo was nearly identical to that of his own cat.  And for a moment there, Big thought, "IS this my cat?"

Anyway, I'll never write the story myself.  I don't have enough affection for cats to make it work**, but it was something I was thinking about quite a bit today.  Maybe, if I go for a run tonight, I'll think about it more.

4/2

Big's cat came back, not even a day later.

I haven't gotten much done today, but ah well.  I'm trying.

Last night, I went on my run even though I had done some writing, and today I think I'll do the same.

If it's quiet at home, I'll record the last bit of Abbie's book, and maybe another of my own stories, so I can have one ready for a future episode.  I was contacted by another podcast that was doing a series of audio dramas, and made the mistake of telling them, "I'll do as many parts as you want me to."  The result was about forty-six characters they want voices for, with a deadline for each one.  Of course, I CAN do it, and it'll sound fine (my bits, at least), it's just a bit overwhelming if you consider that each one is between seven and fifteen minutes of work.  But ah well.  Better than doing nothing on a Saturday night, right?

I finished the reading from last week where I messed up my voice so much I almost puked, and holy smoke, the story was SO GOOD it was worth the pain (again, my voice was so stressed I kept coughing, and eventually had to take a five minute break to get a drink and gargle a couple of staples and thumbtacks).  I think I'll have to find a third story by Edith Nesbit, and maybe record it tonight.

Her style is interesting (although it's from a century ago, so who knows what the norm was?), with gargantuan paragraphs that could fill an entire page, and a combination of obscure, hard-to-parse phrasing, and bits that sound completely modern and natural on my tongue.  Oh, it did include the main character calling his wife "Pussy" as an affectionate nickname, and that did not translate to the 21st Century, to be frank.

I found a collection of her stories online, and I picked one at random, and recorded it for (probably) a future episode).

*I think he's actually ten, but you know how it is.

**Though, what if the cat belonged to Lara Demming or Victoria Holcomb?  What if it's not just a cat, but a demonic familiar?  That could work.