{"id":19538,"date":"2024-04-19T20:40:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-20T00:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19538"},"modified":"2024-04-19T20:40:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-20T00:40:00","slug":"writing-update-old-dog-new-tricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19538","title":{"rendered":"‘Writing’ update: Old dog, new tricks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/
This happens to be the exact microphone I am using, a Blue Yeti, a gift from a friend. Photo credit Chris Yang, chrisyangchrisfilm. Unsplash license.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Landmark achieved.<\/strong> Another step climbed. Pardon me for talking myself up tonight, but I actually accomplished something that had daunted me, and I need to try to overcome my reflexive tendency to downplay it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this is the situation \u2013 I have \u201cmastered\u201d the Audacity recording application. Audacity is a free app that\u2019s probably the most common one used by at-home voiceover artists and narrators. I\u2019ve been wrestling with it for some time now. Has it been months? I\u2019d have to look it up, which seems like a lot of trouble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any case, you need to understand my history with recording engineering. (I mentioned this the last time I gave you an update.) I went to radio broadcast school and hold a (entirely undeserved, and I null and void now, I think) Radiotelegraph Engineer\u2019s license. But I always struggled with the technical stuff. Working with Audacity, is of course, very different from what I fumbled around with in radio back in the 1980s, but I find it equally challenging. Audacity (not really a complicated app) combines the challenges of radio with the challenges of digital technology. For a child of the analogue age, a \u201cdigital immigrant\u201d as they call us, it was less than comfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But \u2013 and this is what gives me a small amount of satisfaction \u2013 I went to work at it systematically. During my morning writing session each day (except that I skip Sundays) I would set up my recording space (like many home voice artists, I employ my closet) and worked at learning Audacity. I watched a lot of how-to videos on YouTube. I studied the instruction book I bought. And I practiced. Cautiously, and with trepidation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided that, due to the considerable stress unfamiliar technology causes me (I actually woke up from a dream one night, my heart pounding), I needed to take it in small steps. I tackled one challenge at a time, researching and practicing one single operation, one skill, at a time. Once I\u2019d gotten the new thing down, I stopped. The Voices in my Head called me lazy. Said I should do something more now, not waste time. But I had decided that sufficient unto the day was the stress of that one step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I repeated this program day after day. Some days I got nothing done. I hadn\u2019t yet solved the problem. But I figured I\u2019d accumulated sufficient stress for the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And gradually, I figured stuff out. The last step stumped me for a couple days \u2013 the operation of cutting and pasting, to make corrections on a track already recorded. My instruction book was unclear, and so were several videos I viewed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This morning I sat down and just played with the app. Viewed a new video, which helped a little. Finally, I tried something that worked. I had it. I\u2019m not a master of Audacity by any means, but I understand the basic operations, I think, that I need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, now I\u2019m going to drop it completely for a while. It\u2019s time to get back to The Baldur Game<\/em>, my work in progress. That\u2019s part of the overall plan. \u00a0Now that I\u2019ve heard back from my beta readers, I need to evaluate their suggestions and get the book into final shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there\u2019ll be the process of publishing the thing through Amazon, another technical challenge I\u2019m uncomfortable with, but I imagine I can figure it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when that\u2019s done, the plan is to start recording The Year of the Warrior<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do not lack things to occupy me, for the immediate future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something else happened today too. I was messing with another piece of new software, a publishing program I have to use for a side gig. And I figured something out on that too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I had another (fleeting) moment of satisfaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I then had an odd, unusual (for me) thought. I thought, \u201cIt\u2019s kind of nice that I\u2019m poor in my old age. If I were rich right now, I\u2019d be vegetating, sitting on a lounge chair somewhere where it\u2019s warm, letting my body run down. I know myself. I never move too far out of my comfort zone unless I\u2019m forced to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, in my 70s, I\u2019m learning new stuff, expanding my skills. Keeping young (in a sense), in spite of myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God, the Author, seems to be at work plotting again. And plotting, as I\u2019ve often said, means torturing your characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So be it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Landmark achieved. Another step climbed. Pardon me for talking myself up tonight, but I actually accomplished something that had daunted me, and I need to try to overcome my reflexive tendency to downplay it. So this is the situation \u2013 I have \u201cmastered\u201d the Audacity recording application. Audacity is a free app that\u2019s probably the … Continue reading ‘Writing’ update: Old dog, new tricks<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[4784,4414,3098],"class_list":["post-19538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-book-narration","tag-the-baldur-game","tag-the-year-of-the-warrior"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19538"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19540,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19538\/revisions\/19540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}