I just finished listening to my first full audio-book recording, and I’m wondering who that strange woman is reading my words. Do I really sound like that? It’s sure not the same voice I hear inside my head when I speak.
Reading aloud to my students was something I always enjoyed. I liked creating different voices for characters, using dramatic pauses, and making the story come alive. Recording an audio book was a new adventure for me, and I thought it would be easy to read a book I’d written myself.
But first I had to I learn all kinds of things I didn’t know I wanted to know about computers and sound feedback and background filters. The real challenge came when I realized I’d have to read a complete chapter, sans mistakes, at one sitting.
A few false starts and several re-dos were necessary before I was able to produce a quality CD I am proud to put my name on. “Just Joshin’, A Year in the Life of a Not-so-ordinary 4th Grade Kid,” is now available as a two-disk audio recording (see link to JanBonoBooks.com in sidebar).
Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Soon I plan to record both my books of poetry, and perhaps I’ll do another collection of stories I wrote for my humorous personal experience newspaper column.
And for the record, a dweeb is defined as inept person. I may not be the fastest learner, but tackling something new, and sticking with it until it’s mastered, doesn’t qualify me as inept. So I’m not a dweeb, no matter what I think my voice sounds like on that recording!
