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.
Another two steps forward* and one step back day--last night, I went to open Chapter 20, and couldn't find it. It had been one of those four chapters (along with Marshal Latham lines) that I'd recorded without plugging in the big microphone (now that I think of it, Marshal would've been fine with less-than-stellar audio, since they don't have clean audio up in Idaho). But before I left for the cabin this week, I had sat myself down and recorded four chapters again (with the mic plugged in) so I'd have plenty to edit while I was there.
But my recorder is running super low on space, since it has dozens of chapters and never-to-be-used short stories on it**, so I tend to have to delete chunks of them every time I go to the cabin (usually, my habit is to leave the audio on the recorder until I have put out the episode/sent Abbie the file, so if there is a glitch or an error discovered, I still have the original to fall back on), and that is what I did . . . except that I seem to have deleted Chapter 20's re-recording too.
So, we're now here:
On the bright side, I've been blogging again every day for three weeks. And since I'm back in that mindset, I think of things I'd like to mention in my blog every single day . . . except I rarely remember to include them once I get in front of the computer again.
But last night, before I fell asleep, I opened Chapter 20 to make sure that I had re-recorded it, and I didn't recognize it. So, it would seem, there had been FIVE chapters that were unusable, and I'd only re-done four. That made me feel better somehow.
*Actually, only a single step forward, but don't depress me with math.
**To save time, I tend to read from my two books of ghost stories (one British and one American) aloud, with the recorder going, so that, if I like it, I've already got it to use on the show. Unfortunately, more than half of those stories I do not like, so they never get edited or put out. Fun, huh?
Today was a long hard day of manual labor . . . but I am determined to edit a chapter. Just not Chapter 22. It's too long.
I ended up doing two chapters, though I found an error in the second of them (and will have to redo a line). I am super tired right now, and even though it's hours before I normally go to bed (I got up before the sun today, so that might have something to do with it), I'm tempted to skip exercise and just hit the sack.
Shoot, that's what I did.
In other news, I hate the word "turducken," and loathe anybody that uses it. I've got a friend in New Zealand, and he's absolutely revolted whenever he hears these dirty, shameful truths about America and our gluttony. When I told him about our fast food culture here, he shook his head and said, "But that's just, like, rich teenagers you're talking about . . . or morbidly obese computer programmers." And the truth is, it's everybody writing this or reading this, except him. Sad, no?*
*I used to have a friend in Argentina, and she would ask me about American culture, because, as she said, there was so much anti-Yanqui (the vile word they call us) propaganda there. And I asked, "Like what?" And she said, "About how racist you guys are, and how wasteful and decadent." I said, "Decadent how?" thinking it would be something sexual. And she said, "Like, I read this disgusting thing that most Americans buy Christmas presents . . . for their dogs. That's gotta be a lie, right?"
And I had to tell her that, growing up, my siblings and I would always get a present for our dog, every year. Sigh.
To download this episode, Right-Click HERE.
Today was busy, too busy to do half of what I had intended. I know, I said that yesterday too.
But I did get a single chapter edited. Granted, it was (probably) the shortest chapter in the book, but it still got done, and that's one step closer to being done. Tomorrow may be better. Excelsior!
So, it's a new day and I woke up twice during the night, the second time in pitch blackness, hearing a sound I couldn't place. It was a hissing sound, coming from upstairs, and I thought, "Is that the wind? Is there a gas leak? Is there a generator running somewhere?* The darned Babadook again?" But it turned out it was rain--that tiny misty kind that doesn't drip so much as spray.
But now I'm up--well before my alarm--and starting to edit again. Since I won't be here next week (it's Thanksgiving), and probably won't be back the week after (it'll be practically December then, and we've never made it up here in December (the roads get snowed out and you get stuck, even in a pickup truck), I'm trying to get in some serious work this visit.
I was telling my cousin that I learn something new every time we do a toy sale in a parking lot or mall or store, and it's the same way with each of these audiobooks. On this one, there are three female characters--all with English accents--that speak to each other, and it's a real challenge to get Wisteria, Shimmer, and Ilsa to sound different from one another.** Also, there are a couple pairs of male characters who sound very similar (Dazzle and Halvery, Stefan and Moshi, Arcove and Carmine), and on the few occasions when they interact, I really struggle to make them obviously distinct people . . . something that kicks me in the Boston Baked Beans when I'm editing.
And editing, as I can't stress enough, is more time-consuming than you can imagine. I make a lot of decisions on the fly while I'm recording--how long to space out my sentences and paragraphs, how to pitch and accent the voices, whether to stop when I hear a car or train or child or f***ing motorcycle in the distance, various performance choices, whether or not to do a line over (I often say, "My mouth made a noise on that line," then do it over, not conscious that there are TWO DOZEN other mouth noises I didn't catch in that session alone), how fast or slow to deliver dialogue and exposition, whether to stop and take a drink when my mouth starts getting dry, and how close my character voice is today from the last time I did it--which was days or months in the past.
But hey, this is what she pays me for. That, and pronouncing nonsense words like "voluntaro," "Lidian," "wisteria," and "however."
***
Anyhow, about an hour ago, it started snowing, just thin, gravely snow at first, then harder, and I thought, for a moment, "Oh boy, I'd better pack up and get out of here before the road becomes impassable." Unpassable? Nonpassable? I didn't want to, but I thought it might be wise, since I only drive a Toyota Corolla, and it's less-than-great in snow and mud.
But I had only gotten one solitary chapter edited, and I'd checked out a book from the library to record a short story from, and I didn't want to cut the trip short, so I just hoped it'd go away . . . and it did. The snow stopped, and now, it's sliding off the roof of the cabin next to mine in big splotchy clumps, and by the time I get out of here for real this afternoon, it should be all melted. Sometimes, it pays to be not-smart.
***
*They tend to make a heck of a racket, or maybe sound travels a lot further out here, so even if there's one several cabins over, you can hear their generator buzzing all night long. When we had one (we use solar now), the last person awake--always me--would have to go out to the shed and turn it off.
**Abbie asked me the other day if it was hard to strain my voice to do the dialogue for a character that is mortally injured, and no, that's just acting. And something I enjoy, even if it makes me cough. But this, this is hard (especially Ilsa's voice). But also, I've got to challenge Abbie for her next book, to not say "____ hesitated" a hundred times. I have a real difficulty with that word, and if I can commit her to only using it five or six times--the whole book--then she'd rise up on my list of favorite people. She's currently smack between Lou Costello and my rich uncle George.
Should I tell 'em?
Well, you win some and you lose some. As the above graphic shows . . . we took one step forward, and two steps back. I discovered that my microphone was not plugged in for not one, not two, but four chapters, recording lower-quality room audio, which would be fine for one of my podcasts, but not for a professional (oh, sorry, "professional") audiobook.
I did sit down and re-record two of the unusable chapters today, but they were the two shorter ones. On the other hand, I did edit one of the longest chapters, and while it took me from afternoon until it was dark outside, it's one more (small) step closer to the finish line.
I'm at the cabin now (probably the last time this year) and I continue to be no damn good at making a fire. But hey, I'll take advantage of the cold and edit a little bit more.
Okay, some progress, but it's still pretty sad.
I got two chapters edited today, which ain't great, but is good.
One of the main characters in the book is named Wisteria, and that's a word that, apart from the buzz around "Desperate Housewives," I've never heard or read.
So, it may come as no surprise that I sometimes call her "Wist-air-ya" and sometimes call her "Wist-ear-ya." And you might say, "Rish, who cares how you pronounce it; it's not like it's a real word."
And preach on, brother, except Abigail Hilton cares. And she would argue that wisteria is indeed a word, even going so far as to send me links to Wikipedia (that she obviously created herself in an elaborate attempt to gaslight me).
Luckily, I've managed to pronounce "rat's pizzle" correctly throughout. So far.
So, back when I was first recording "Legacy," I found a chapter that (for reasons I no longer recall) seemed like it would be a good example for Marshal "The Butcher" Latham to edit for me, since he had generously offered to do one. Turned out it was kind of a two-part chapter, narratively, and so I stuck the second part in the Dropbox, if he wanted to edit that too.
He never said anything about it, just went ahead and edited both of them. I still had to cut out a few mouth sounds, but the heavy lifting was done. That should have given me plenty of time to edit the rest of the chapters around them, but I didn't do so hot.* Even so, I had worked hard enough at the start of the month that I am still on track to be finished by the deadline, which is sixteen days away. Plenty of time.
*I told my cousin two weeks back that I hoped to get ten chapters edited while I was at the cabin, and I only got half that. Last week, I got even fewer.
Looking at my chart, there are a lot of white spots--which represent days I didn't exercise--but they aren't the majority, not even close. In fact, if I decided not to exercise for the rest of 2023 (and simply soil myself whilst watching "Euphoria" and the Canadian remake of "Skins"), I would still have achieved my goal to have exercised 200 days this year.
But don't you worry, I currently have no plans to watch "Euphoria" or "Skins" any time soon.
Uh oh. Looks like another day with no progress. Although today and yesterday were the last big toy selling days of the year for me and my cousin, I stretched myself thin enough that I couldn't stay awake whilst editing, OR whilst watching "Saturday Night Live" on television.
So, it was pretty much a failure, editing-wise. But I did manage to make a little money, have a good time, and pass out early enough that I woke up with the sun the next day (which caused me to accomplish quite a bit in the morning, and then start dragging as afternoon became evening).
I only managed to edit a single chapter, and went to the living room to watch "South Park" and have a little ice cream. I opened my eyes not long after to discover that the half-hour show had long ended, and the ice cream had melted over the coffee table.* Sorry about that.
*I did force myself to do push-ups before I dragged my flabby carcass to bed, so I don't feel nearly as bad about it as I should.
Well, it finally happened: a day without working on "Legacy." And that was with getting up nearly two hours early this morning.
Wait, that's not quite true (the no working on "Legacy" part). I sat down and did relines in two chapters, then got those two edited back in, but still, that doesn't impact my chart at all.
Bonus points if you can identify the two horror movie images above.
I'm at the cabin, and my hands are cold (my feet were really cold yesterday, and I did that thing where I kept putting socks on the stove, then switching them out with the ones on my feet, but for some reason, it's my hands today), but I've accomplished a great deal with the time I've had today. I have to leave extra early today--earlier than I've ever left before, because I need to trade vehicles with my cousin, and yesterday, the road to the cabin (at the end of the canyon) was closed, and they were turning traffic away, so I went all the way back up the canyon and back into town, and considered--seriously considered--just going home and trying to edit there. But I ended up driving an hour out of my way, going way down south to another road that bypassed the canyon altogether, so I could get here and do my thing. And it was very nearly dark, what with the time change this past Sunday and the extra hour of delay, so I didn't go do my run or check messages or anything, since I just didn't have the time.
I edited a couple of chapters, edited a podcast, recorded a podcast, ate, wrote a blogpost, started editing another podcast, and now ought to go stack wood for next week (I burned nearly all I had piled up two weeks ago, and if next week is the last time I come up here, I'd like there to be dry stacked wood just outside the door), but I had also thought about recording an Algernon Blackwood story today, and maybe watching a movie before leaving to meet my cousin (I have to swap vehicles with her for the "big" toy convention this weekend), but you know how it is--there's never enough time to finish everything on your to-do list . . . even when I discovered that, because I hadn't set the clock in the cabin back, there was an extra hour before I had to leave.
Sadly, I didn't get any editing done today on the book--just the chapter Marshal Latham edited for me. Still counts.
At this point, the recording is 100% done (not including retakes), and the editing is 38% done. I'll take it.
What if there comes a day when I do no work on "Legacy," either recording or editing? Would I still blog about it?
Hell yeah. And I'd include something like this, as punishment for us both:
I asked A.I. to make me an image of Satan hugging a teddy bear, and it couldn't (it only drew a teddy bear--although one of them had three ears). So I told it to draw the Devil hugging a teddy bear, but same result (this time, there were two teddy bears side by side, but no hugging). I told it to do a demon hugging a teddy bear, and no go (I can't understand what the problem was), so I told it to do the same with Hitler. And this it could do (although the bear looks a bit stretched out, and Adolf looks way too much like Walt Disney for my comfort. But ah well.
Alright, I sat down and went though to the end (recording-wise). She wrote such short chapters that, every time I reached a long one, I felt like it was actual work.* Oh no, a chapter of three thousand words, whatever will I do?
On the last chapter, I put a pizza in the oven right before I began, and challenged myself to finish before the timer went off. I failed, but the pizza tasted all the better knowing I had earned it.
Should I put "earned" in quotation marks?
*Of course, on my own books, there could be a nine hundred word chapter that takes me half an hour, so it's all relative.
Abbie has started to listen to the chapters I've sent her, and she sent me a list of lines she wants me to do over again. I was thinking I'd wait and do all of them together, once she'd heard a dozen chapters, but that might not be logical (after all, can I really mark them off my chart if there's a mistake in every one of them?). What I'd really like to do is buckle down hard, getting as much done now as possible, so that late, when I'd tired and grouchy, I can move at a much more leisurely pace.
Hence:
*Until her daddy took the bananas away.
So, here we are, a week into this thing . . . and I'm doing great, at least as far as recording goes. We had that thing where the time changes--you know, Rosh Hashana--so I woke up more than an hour before my alarm. I lay there for a while, thinking about nonsense, and then put on Marshal Latham's podcast to listen to (either to lull me to sleep--the heavy embrace of welcome death--or just to pass the time), and it was interesting enough I couldn't go back to sleep. But he spoke about his goals (you know the thing, I could do better, I could work harder, I could say the Q-word less often), and it got to me enough that I turned off his podcast and got to work editing Chapter 7 of "Legacy."
I got it done before my alarm went off, and wasted four or five hours on this dumb graphic before finally getting up and starting my day. Okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but that's how it felt.
I did manage to get an episode edited, but I did it with little enthusiasm . . . and I found a bit where I said the wrong word (and didn't correct myself), which means I'll have to do some relines. But I always do.
I meant to share this a week or so back, but when I write a blog post in the Blogger itself, it doesn't save it until I connect to the internet (it's a whole thing), and my laptop hates me more than you do.
If you're a Patreon supporter of me (and if you ain't, HERE'S THE LINK yet again), you've already heard a bit about this (in my November Patreon address), but I've been experimenting with one of those A.I. art programs, such as this image of a "woman wearing a Guy Fawkes mask," which was my prompt:
People have speculated about how A.I. will destroy us all for decades, but it's really ramped up since you could just go on the internet and tell it to write you a paper, create you a painting, or arrange the death of your wife.
