I had a list of fixes and re-lines Abbie sent me to do before I get paid. I did a little count, and there are ten changes (only one of which made me want to go all orangutan and throw food, laptops, and dung at the wall), ten changes and the audiobook will be put to bed (except for the dedication at the start, which I told Abbie to record herself, for reasons unknown). I will try to get them all recorded tonight, but might not edit them in until tomorrow night. We'll see.
I've never been tempted to burn the library down before, even when that employee told me that it was haunted (I always meant to talk about that on a podcast, but never did). But today I got an overdue notice for the book I tried to return on Friday, only to discover that the library was closed between Thursday and Monday, and the book return drops had all been locked up too.
As far as exercise goes, I went on my full run last night, despite it being in the thirties, and it didn't even seem all that cold (running probably does that). But tonight, it was twenty-five degrees out, and man, it was just too cold for me. I only made it half a mile before slinking back like a kicked dog (a shivering, kicked dog), but since I make the rules, it still counts.
I keep telling Big that, as soon as this audiobook is finished, I'll start writing again. But what should I write? I had an idea for a Christmas story last week, but have done nothing with it. I last worked on a Lara & the Witch story where Lara takes Holcomb's place through a spell that makes her look like the witch, and got close to finishing it (like, within eight or ten pages), but then abandoned it. I could grab that and get it done. Abbie suggested I finally write "The Sins of a Sidekick," which was the Ben Parks story where he takes up with a wise old preacher . . . who seems to know less about the Bible than an eleven year old orphan boy, and that story is probably six years overdue, so I could try that.
Oh, and there's that darn Thanksgiving Star Wars sketch I had vowed to get written, recorded, and edited this month . . . but it still sits unfinished. We'll see which, if any of those, I choose.
Last year, I forced Marshal to watch KING SOLOMON'S MINES, a light-hearted RAIDERS rip-off starring Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone, and John-Rhys Davies. I liked it a lot more than he did, so we waited a year to watch the sequel, ALLAN QUATERMAIN & THE LOST CITY OF GOLD.
Was it as good as the first one? Was it more or less of an Indiana Jones rip-off? Did it co-star any Dark Lords of the Sith or Mistresses of the Dark? Find out HERE.
Okay, I reached the end of the book.
Well, I'm not technically done. Abbie has sent me a few changes she needs, and I'm going to sit down as soon as the g***mn football stops blasting in the living room and record the copyright bit for the end, but as far as the main edit goes, I'm finished. Which means, this is the last time you'll see this abomination:
I ain't gonna miss it.
This has been fun.
Oh no, not the editing. The blogging each day. And the god-awful thermometer progress bars. Next time, I should just draw one myself (maybe in the shape of a skull, or R2-D2, or Flux Capacitor, or dildo), so it will be easier to make look semi-professional.
I got an idea for a holiday story today, and tried my best to finish editing early so I could run over to the library, return all the videos and books I had checked out to use at the cabin but never got to, and spend an hour plotting out the tale. But I didn't quite manage.
So, I quit editing halfway through the Author's Note, and drove over, hoping to get at least half an hour in before they kicked people out.
I needn't have bothered--the bastards closed on Thanksgiving, and don't open again until Monday. What's worse, they closed their night book drop, so I can't return the overdue items, and have to keep paying late fees on them. I found that rather empissening, sir.
Wish me luck!
I am tired today, for some reason.
But I got Chapter 37 edited, and it was a bear. Lots of mouth sounds, and lots of me coughing and doing lines badly. Carmine and Arcove have a long conversation, and too often, they didn't sound differently enough to each other (but she didn't keep saying, "Carmine said" or "said Arcove," which I would've sprinkled liberally throughout, to make up for my narrating shortcomings.
It's long, but it's not so long that I should have fallen asleep over and over again. I guess I'll blame it on the Thanksgiving turkey.
It amazes me that Norm can continue to do such fine work (and that I haven't listened in so long). It's a short episode, you can check out at THIS LINK.
*It's a post-apocalyptic Western, with a world of mostly robots, so, hey, we got that to look forward to.
No cabin this week, otherwise I'm pretty sure I would be done today. But hey, I can still be done sometime on the weekend, and that's just as good.
I keep getting confused on these blogposts, because I started them the day before November began, so Day 24 hits on the 23rd . . . and that keeps confusing me.
Today, I set aside an hour to edit Chapter 35. It wasn't enough.
It's weird, since it's only 4710 words. But it's the climax of the book, and she's packed everything into it, including a knock-down drag-out fight.
It's funny, when I finally finished the chapter (even though I caught a mistake I made I'd have to re-do), I felt like I had accomplished something difficult, almost like after a big hike or a particularly-sweaty run. Huh.
Okay, I'm in the home stretch.
Today, I'm editing Chapter 34 (a super short chapter, thank Bossk*), and I thought it would be interesting to count how many edits total it takes to get to the end. My prediction is around thirty, but I'll count them at the end, and we'll see.
There are so many little edits one does on each chapter (unless you're Renee Chambliss, of course): mouth sounds, different line deliveries, pitching up Ilsa's voice so she sounds younger than Velta, adding Echo to thoughts, cutting out throat-clearing, the damned windchimes the neighbors decided to hang right outside my window**, and of course, all the mistakes I make
Luckily, most mouth sounds (though, infernally, not all) are easy to spot on the audio wave form. Do you see the one here?
They often appear as a thin vertical line, which makes them easy to spot, except when they aren't.
So, I finished, saved the file, then closed it . . . only then realizing that I had meant to go back and count all the edits. Whoops. But let me say that, when I reached the five minute point, I did a count, just to see where I was, and I was at 84. Eighty-four edits only partway through.
Makes me feel all the dumber for forgetting to count at the end.
*Tomorrow's chapter is gargantuan. Indeed, Bossk help us all.
**They said they were tired of hearing the audio of those Animes where screeching Japanese schoolgirls are molested by demons on midsummer nights. To each their own.
I meant to re-record Chapter 20 yesterday, but I lost my recorder. It was a whole ordeal, and I don't know if I should waste your time with the story or not.* Long story short, I couldn't find the recorder until this afternoon, but I sat down and got the chapter done, as well as relines for Chapters 24 and 32, in less than a half hour (heck, I was able to insert the relines and edit Chapter 20 in the same hour).
I even managed a second chapter by the end of the day. Not long now.
*I had taken my recorder with me in the car, intending to record for my Patreon address, but I started talking to Big Anklevich on the phone, and never got to it. Later, as it was getting dark, I couldn't find the recorder, and suspected I'd left it at the storage unit somehow. I drove over there, doing inventory for ten minutes or so before it was too dark to continue, but didn't find the recorder. Obviously, I'd taken it out of the car and put it on my desk where it belonged. Except it wasn't there.
I looked through the car, sifting through bags, pretty sure I had put it in a bag when I first carried it out to the car, but it wasn't there. So, when it came time to do my relines that night (when everyone had gone to bed and it was quiet), I couldn't do it, and instead boxed up loose junk and inventoried it in the living room.
I drove back to the storage unit when I got up, sure I'd accidentally dropped it somewhere, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember what had been in that bag I had stuffed it in. It wasn't anywhere that I looked, and I was about to give up--even going so far as to close the door and start to lock it again--but I remembered I had sold something (Stilt-man's Torso piece), so I opened it up again and made my way to the back to grab it . . . and there was a bag with a couple of loose, worthless figures I had decided not to bother with two nights before, and sure enough, the recorder was below them. Two birds with one ston--well, it was several stones by this point.
I decided to make myself edit Chapter 22 today (despite having skipped it and being in the 30s now). The recording was about forty-five minutes long
I discovered--and I was aware of this during the recording, as I kept clearing my throat and cursing myself over it--that my mouth made an annoying popping sound in virtually every single sentence . . . sometimes multiples in a single sentence. When I did Halvery's voice it was much, much worse (which is too bad, since he's the POV character in that chapter), and I cannot explain why that would be so.
Finally, I decided to make a Facebook post over on the Audiobook Narrator section that I never go to anymore, in case someone there has a tip or pre-narration ritual they follow. In it, I wrote "I'm editing a chapter I recorded, and my mouth keeps making *popping* noises, like I was chewing gum or Elmer's Glue. Do you have any advice as to avoid these mouth sounds?"
I only got one reply, and it was so gloriously pedantic that I regretted ever posing the question, and indeed, ever being born.
But I edited my post to clarify that it was just on that chapter, and almost immediately, I got the kind of response I was looking for.
Anyway, I got the chapter finished . . . only took me ninety minutes (final chapter total 28:44). Sigh.
