Audiobook Revelations
Hello Dear Reader!
I am currently working with my audiobook narrator to proof chapters and work towards getting the audiobook version of A Songbird’s Tale ready in time for Dragonsteel Nexus. This has brought about some interesting revelations which I want to reflect on.
It’s been several months since I’ve really done much with book. I haven’t read it or gone over it in at least six months, probably more.
Aside from the fact that it is absolutely weird and wild and magical and terrifying all in one to hear a professional read your book out loud, it is very, VERY humbling. And eye opening. (If you want a sample, check out the Prolog!)
I’ve written before at length about how difficult it was to write a book. It takes time, consistency, commitment, dedication, and (for me at least) a lot of emotional fortitude. I read and wrote avidly when I was younger and then kind of put it away for many years throughout college and a little beyond. It’s only been in the last four or five years that I’ve really come back to my love of reading and writing, with the exception of little spurts here and there. I had always wanted to be a writer when I was younger and got tired of telling people “Someday I’ll write a book.”
Well I finally did it. It was a little bit of a break-neck-fever-dream kind of pace at times, but I pushed myself really hard to get it done. I did several major re-writes. I had writing mentors helping me out along the way. I hired a developmental editor. I hired a professional copy-editor. Friends, believe me when I tell you that A Songbird’s Tale went through a solid 9 or 10 rounds of editing, with two paid, professional editors.
Why is this important? Because while I’m listening to chapters from my narrator, I feel like I’m all the way back at square one getting feedback on my first draft. It’s been full of emotional ups and downs for me. There are moments where I am cackling out loud to myself and thinking, “This is pretty good, I didn’t do too bad at this whole novel thing.” And then there are moments where I have to pause the recording and walk away from my computer because all I can think is “HOW DID THIS GARBAGE HEAP GET THROUGH SO MANY ROUNDS OF EDITING AND STILL SOUND SO BAD???? WHAT IF ROWAN NEVER WANTS TO WORK WITH ME AGAIN BECAUSE HE THINKS MY BOOK IS SO BAD!?!?!?” Cue despair spiral.
I’m sure there are some people out there who might say that it was a mistake to publish my first book. And maybe it was, but you have to start somewhere, and this was a story I really wanted to share with the world. There are others who will say, “Well, objectively, if you continue to improve as a writer, then your first book will always be your worst.” And I can see that. Even in the span of a single year from when I declared my book finished and hit the publish button in Amazon to now, I’ve read more books on the craft of writing and I’ve been reading a lot of really good prose in the books I am reading for fun. So in listening to my novel, there are parts that a year ago might have sounded fine, but now they sound horrible.
This was humiliating and demoralizing at first. I tend to get stuck between my ears and I was feeling incredibly down on myself. I’m sure there will be more moments like that before the whole process is done.
BUT.
Instead of beating myself up, I’m allowing myself the space to just feel crummy, and then working to reframe some of those thoughts and feelings and listen to what they’re really trying to tell me. Here are some of the things I am choosing to focus on instead.
1) I’ve grown and learned! I can clearly recognize what it is in certain parts that I don’t like AND, best of all, how I’m going to improve and do better in the next book. What a huge accomplishment! This means that I’m improving in my skills.
2) The reason that I’m so frustrated is because I care so deeply. I genuinely want to do a good job. If I didn’t care at all, it wouldn’t bother me. So this just means that I still love my work and I’m passionate about doing a great job in telling a wonderful and engaging story.
3) It is OK to make mistakes. Nobody does it perfect, and especially not on the first try. As much as I absolutely love and adore the story of A Songbird’s Tale, I have to remind myself that it is my first book and it was very, very much a learning curve. I was pretty much laying down the tracks as the train was coming. Even if I am still frustrated, I need to remember that I was doing my absolute very best with the skill-set that I had at the time.
Looking back at what was happening in the parts of the story where I’m feeling like my writing could have been much better, I can see and understand why I made the choices I did, especially given some of the feedback I had gotten from one of my editors.
At the risk of drawing attention to something I’m hoping readers won’t pick up on quite as much as I did, I’ll give you an example. Jaren, one of the main characters in the novel, is blind. In one of my earlier drafts I had quite a lot of descriptions of the world around Jaren and what he was encountering and experiencing. My developmental editor gave me quite a lot of feedback about how she didn’t feel like she was experiencing the story from the perspective of a blind character. I would get a lot of comments like “Well, these descriptions are very lovely, but how does Jaren know this?”
So, in response, I added in a lot of “Jaren smelled” “Jaren heard” “Jaren felt” type descriptors into my narrative. In doing so, I think I over-corrected a tremendous amount. There are parts where I am listening to the narrator and it feels a bit like reading stage directions. Hopefully it is not quite as bad as I think it is, but there you have it. One of the writing craft books I am reading talks about the dangers of doing this because it can pull your reader out of the narrative. If I were to go back and re-work these sections, I would take a lot of the “Jaren [verb]” phrasing out and put more focus on the sounds or smells without drawing attention to the fact that we are reading about Jaren experiencing them, hopefully to draw the reading into the narrative more, as if they were experiencing those sensations themselves.
There was another paragraph where I have a character repeat herself multiple times. I was going to say she repeats the same word six times, but when I went back and counted it was only three. BUT LET ME TELL YOU, hearing it read out loud it felt like six. I cannot even begin to explain why this paragraph made me so disheartened, but it did. I kept asking over and over how something so bad got through so much editing. And then I remind myself that even in the professional, trad publishing world things like this happen:
Ah, yes, the legendary heroes of Oympus.
If there are typos in coming out of trad publishing houses from time to time, where they have whole teams of people working on and checking projects, then I'm certainly allowed some grace.
The whole point here is not to be too hard on yourself. It’s so easy to fall into that trap of feeling like what we do has to be perfect, and if it’s not perfect then it’s absolute trash. Readers, that’s simply not true. We like to think in ultimatums, but life is full of all the grey space in between.
I feel like maybe the universe is trying to tell me something as this post comes hot on the heels of my Good, Not Perfect post.
Some of these things I can likely work with my narrator to fix. And we’re only ten chapters in as of writing this, so I’m hoping that things steadily improve as we go further into the novel. But even if we can’t I have to try to remember that it is indeed my first novel, and that there were bound to be some things that didn’t turn out quite how I envisioned it. I can continue to be proud of myself knowing that despite that, I really did the best I could at the time.
Till next time dear reader, cut yourself some slack. Don’t talk so harshly to yourself. Give yourself a little grace. I see you out there, doing your very best. You got this. And in case no one has told you lately, you’re doing amazing. Know that I’m rooting for you! <3 Tiff
