Episode 2 - What's the plan?

In this weeks podcast I'll discuss what I'm doing currently to get to my goals, a productivity technique that's really helping me, and I'll give a shout out to what I've been listening to this week.

Transcript

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You're listening to the Standing Wave Podcast. All things spoken word. Welcome all. It is Friday, June 26, 2026. And this is episode two of the Standing Wave Podcast. Today I want to talk a little bit about all the current activities that I'm doing to move closer to my two big goals. I want to talk a little bit about a productivity technique and a tool that goes along with that that I think is helpful for me. And I think maybe some other people will find it interesting. And I want to talk about what I've been listening to in the last week, and that's uh it's actually pretty exciting, at least for me. So I'm I'm kind of excited to talk about that. And I do want to make a quick note on the last podcast. Um, I ended up losing like 10 minutes of that audio, and I I just kind of filled in, it was towards the end, and I kind of filled in, and by that point I was tired of re-recording it. So it ended up being a little shorter and maybe not as good as it could have been, but I kind of wanted to get that first episode and out and move on. So um may not have noticed it, but but it it's forced me to change how I edit these. It was a good learning experience, actually. Um, how I lost it. Uh so yeah, I've changed the way I'm I'm editing and setting up my internal recording of the podcast. So hopefully that won't happen in the future. Um, so I mentioned my two big goals. I just want to revisit those real quick. Um, and these all these these two goals revolve around creating a premiere provider of all things spoken word. That's kind of the you know, the the overarching um uh thing that I have in my mind, a little phrase I have in my mind um as a you know goal statement. And then within that, the two big goals are number one, uh produce high quality, high production value audio dramas. Um, and then the second is to open a commercial recording studio that specializes in spoken word. Those are the two goals I'm working on, and I'm you know trying to focus as much of my time as I can on. So, what am I doing to move myself forward towards those goals? Um, currently I am focusing on three activities. One is voice practice, two is putting together an initial script that I can eventually produce, and then three is just continue to experiment with um gear and software and microphones and whatnot in terms of recording and mixing audio, just to get myself more familiar with what I have. So let's start with the voice practice. Um as I mentioned earlier, it is not necessarily my intention that I am going to be any sort of um voice talent in this whole thing, but I also am curious to give it a try. Um, you know, my intention is for these big productions is to hire voice talent. But also one of the immediate ways I could start bringing in money is to pick up voice work. But of course, I've never done any of that before. I have no experience. And so to that end, I am doing various um voice exercises where I will read dummy ad, do dummy ad reads, and I will just grab uh books and do um reads of a of an entire chapter. And I'll listen to, I'll record those, listen back, and in the case of ad reads, I may do it five, seven times, whatever. I'll I'll record it, listen back, think about, you know, analyze how I said what I said and what I want to change, then record it again. And those are easy because those are fairly short. Audiobook chapters, I will do the same thing. I'll record it, listen back, and um I may record it back the next day or another day, um, just depending. But but with the idea that I'm continually analyzing what I'm doing and and hopefully trying to get better. And it's an interesting thing with with this, you know. I I said I think in the previous podcast that you always have to remain humble and realize I don't know what I'm doing, right? I'm I'm completely new at this, so I just need to be open to learning, but realize that I'm gonna fail and and be prepared for that and just learn from it. It's interesting in this voice practice. I almost have to do the opposite thing and tell myself that I'm not as bad as I think, because I I think myself and and I think it's a common thing, you hear your voice played back, it sounds different than you think it does when you're speaking, because you get resonances in your head and whatnot. So your voice actually sounds different when it's just played back to you. And I hate the sound of my own voice. And so when I listen to it, I'm immediately like, ugh. But I think the important thing there is to realize, and something um I sort of had an epiphany about, you know, starting to actually listen to ad reads and on TV and and uh radio, is that in my mind at least, you have this, I have this picture of the deep voice announcer guy, you know, think the uh in a world guy. And um, but when you actually listen to ad reads and uh voiceovers in general, it's not the voices have a great variety of timbers. So it kind of stuck in my mind, or I had an epiphany that that, yeah, my voice doesn't sound like something I have in mind is an ideal, but it is my voice. And that's not anywhere near as important as how you're reading things, the emotions you bring, the phrasing, that where you pause, where you give emphasis, all that. And so for me, it's an added step of getting past that sort of shocking sound of my voice, like, ooh, God, I don't like the sound of that. Um, getting past that, and then thinking about, okay, that's fine. Forget that. How am I reading this and how could I do it better? So that's where I'm at with with voice practice. Um, and I do that for a minimum of 10 minutes every day. Um and generally it ends up being longer, but I it's one of those things, uh, you know, habit-building uh thing where just do it for 10 minutes every day and I end up going long, but just get going and uh and so that it it becomes a recurring habit and and so you are doing it. It's not something you do every once in a while, it keeps it fresh in your mind. Okay, so the next thing I'm working on, and it's sort of a uh big thing and a foundational thing, is to get some sort of script together that I can produce into an audio drama. And I'm sort of approaching this from several different angles. One is I'm working on an idea that it's been floating around in my head, semi-formed for a while now. Um and so I try to I'm trying to sketch that out and write little pieces. And writing is another thing that although I have maybe a little more experience, which means some experience, um, writing versus doing voice work. That was in high school. I used to write a lot in high school and you know, went to some writing workshops and whatnot, but high school was a long time ago and I haven't done any writing since then. So essentially starting from scratch. Um so similarly with the voice practice, I try to write for a minimum of 15 minutes every day. Most of that has been around this this um idea, original idea that I'm I'm working on. Um and it's slow, very slow going. Um I do a lot of sketching out of story and characters and and scenes and whatnot. And then I will just dive in, you know, start a scene and just start writing dialogue. Um and with you know, an idea of what's going to happen in this scene, but but not really thinking it through too much, just sort of letting it flow. And then I'll go back and it's crap, but it also gives me some ideas. Okay, well, here's what I want this person to say, or oh, here's a plot element I can insert here that may come in later. Um and and just to get me writing, just start doing it. Um, and and the same thing with you know voice practice, write something, analyze it, go back, do it again, change it, uh, whatever, and you know, just try to improve. And um that is is going, but it's it's very slow going, right? Because I don't I don't even have the full idea of how this thing's gonna play out um, you know, this in terms of the story. So another angle I'm approaching it from is looking at um public domain material. Um, you know, there's a lot of written public domain material that I can go and adapt into something. Um so I'm I'm looking through public domain stories, and I I read through one and it's interesting. I read through one and I thought, and and keep in mind, public domain stuff is all very old. It's you know, 50s and earlier kind of thing. And so, you know, the first one I read that the you know, reading the the description of the story sounded interesting. And then when I read it, it's you know, it's very dated. Um, especially these are I'm I'm focusing right now on science fiction stories, and so it's you know, it's very dated. And my initial reaction was, okay, well, move on, keep looking. But I also realized that they're all gonna be like this, right? I'm not gonna get any modern stories. Um, and a lot of you know, the big public domain uh properties have been made into movies or stories, whatever. Um, so I thought to myself, okay, the original idea that attracted me to want to read this story was actually kind of interesting. There's there's a nugget there. Um, and the story itself is is kind of interesting. So I'm looking at these things now with with a sort of wider, more open mind, whether, sure, I can't just directly adapt this story as written, but can I expand it a little bit, change it a little bit, modernize it, or keep it, you know, a period story, so to speak, but but just sort of add some some more elements, expand it, whatever. So I'm looking at it in that form, but I'm also I've got my next little public domain thing I'm I'm gonna read next and read through that. Um so though those are the two ways I'm currently approaching it. The third way would be to uh find an original piece and license it from someone um that someone else has written. And that's a possibility. I just don't have a good way right now to reach out to anybody, but I may start opening those channels and trying to to find out some information on that, uh, because that would be obviously an even easier way. Look, I like this thing that you have written, uh third party person, um, and I'm willing to pay you some amount of money to license that and produce it into into an audio drama. So that's that would be the third way to uh do this. And this is all um trying to push to getting something out, right? It's easy to, oh sure, I could spend two, three years just trying to write a story, but I don't want to wait that long. I'm I want to keep pushing forward, and so I want to find something that, you know, not in the next two weeks or even two months, but you know, by the end of the year, let's say, I want to have something that's in a state that I think, okay, I'm ready to go out and look for voice actors and and start getting this thing done. So that's that's the second big uh thing that I'm working on in terms of trying to get closer to these two two big goals. And then the third one is uh probably what I'll say the easiest for me or most in my comfort zone uh these days. And that is I'm just going through the equipment I have and doing a bunch of experimentation and learning in terms of, you know, like microphones, microphone preamps, compressors, EQ, various pieces of software, and just making sure I really understand how they work and just doing test mixes, test recordings. Um one of the big things I'm doing besides this podcast is in terms of those audiobook uh chapter reads that I'm doing uh for voice practice, I will also then take those, mix those, and you know, forget the actual how good the read is, but then mix those um to where I think it sounds good, and then drive around in my car and listen to it in my car, which I think is where a lot of people, you know, bat and earbuds, um, listen to that and then A B it with an audio, an actual audiobook that I'm listening to, and you know, I'll make sure it's you know a bestseller with a you know best-selling authors, and therefore more likely to have very high production values when it's being recorded and produced, um, and then record and then uh compare what I'm doing against that. And obviously, the voices may have different timbers. I'm not trying to make my voice sound specifically like whatever reader's voice is, but in terms of sound quality and sort of how the mix sounds, that's what I'm trying to get close to. And that's actually doing that has been really helpful. You need, you know, at this point, is at this stage in my learning, I need a professional reference to compare myself against. And so audiobooks are a great way to do that. Um, and it's funny because the first time I did that, I mixed it in my little home studio, got it to where it sounded, I thought, really good, got in my car, started driving. In that case, I I think I was driving up to Oregon, and uh I was just shocked at how horrible it sounded. Um and one thing I've learned is is my my mixing space is terrible. Um I basically have to mix on headphones. So I went back and I I remixed it on headphones, and the next time I listened to it in the car, it sounded pretty good. I was pretty happy with it. So stuff like this is a great exercise because I need to be at a point where I can, you know, I don't intend to to uh hire this out to a third party. This is part of what I want to do is is uh mix these. So I need to make sure, you know, I have very good equipment. I I originally when just messing around with music, I just buy something that would do something and you know, kind of experiment with it. But lately anything I buy has to be kind of on the higher end of things because you know, in the end, you can you can make good audio with with anything, you don't have to spend a lot of money. But in the eventuality that I open a commercial studio, I want to have high quality equipment and I want to have stuff specifically that's useful for spoken word. There's a lot of stuff that you can make music with that is not really suitable for spoken word. Um so everything I'm buying at this point is, like I said, on the higher end and specifically focused on spoken word. Um and that's so that's the third big thing I'm working on to try to get to these two big goals. So do voice work myself, experiment with the equipment I have and make sure I understand how to make a good audio mix and and then get a script together that that I can actually produce. And so those are the steps I'm currently taking. Those may evolve as time goes on, but that's where I'm at right now. Now, one of the things I want to talk about, at least from time to time on this podcast, are tools and techniques that are helping me um try to achieve these goals. And especially in my situation, and probably for everybody's situation, I'm just trying to do way too many things at the same time. And it's very easy to um sort of forget things or you know, let stuff slip. And and so I think um using having systemized tools and and techniques uh can really help maintain focus and kind of keep things moving along. And the one I want to talk about today, and it's it's been a big one for me in general for many years now, is something called getting things done, also abbreviated quite frequently as GTD. Um this is a technique that um a guy named David Allen, he wrote a book called Getting Things Done and and laid this out. And I forget where I was recommended this book, but it was a long uh five, ten maybe years ago, I don't know. Um and it really spoke to me and it is really helped me. So the idea is uh with getting things done, the idea is, especially in a situation where you just have all these ideas or all these tasks that you need to do, it is a super bad idea to try to keep them all in your head. Um, because you know you'll focus on one thing and something you thought of randomly three weeks ago that's a good idea will just get totally forgotten about because it just kind of came and went, but you're focusing on something else. And the idea here is stop trying to hold this in your head, put it down in in a list, and actually in multiple lists. Um and the the basic technique idea is um you know, create projects that you want to do, create a list of tasks uh that need to be done for that project, put those in lists. So project A will have a list of a bunch of stuff that needs to be done. Take those tasks and prioritize them so that you know the most important ones on top, the one to do after that is right after that. Um and then sort of um the execution of that is it's a good idea every day go through, create a list from those lists, pick out tasks that you want to do today, and move those to your, you know, do it today list, and then just go and do them. And this really helps in the fact that you're not if you have a spare bit of time, you're not thinking, oh gosh, there's like five things I need to do. What, oh, and there's this other thing I thought of. Oh, what about that? No, you have a very clear list of things in priority order that you need to do, and that order can change as things come up. But every morning you go through and say, okay, I'm gonna work on this project, this project, and this project today. I'm gonna pick one or two tasks from each project, put them in my today list, prioritize those within your today list, and then you know what to do. If you have a spare bit of time, you look at your list, like, okay, that's the next thing to do, let's go do it. Um and it really takes a lot of brain power out of both remembering and and sort of prioritizing on the fly, and it leaves you with. Very clear directions for yourself as to what to do. And so when you have time, you just do it. You don't, you don't fumble around with what to do. Um and this has worked out really well for me. And one thing I will, a caveat I will give to this, and it's something I I sometimes struggle with, and I have to keep constantly sort of come back and look at this aspect and remind myself to not do it. But it's very easy on that today list is just throw tons of stuff. Oh, I don't know, this week I'm gonna, this is a bunch of stuff I want to do this week. I'll just put it on the today list and you know I'll I'll kind of go through and check it off as I go. But then the problem is as days go by, things change, you have more, less time, priorities may change, something may come up where you have to um do something before something else you had planned, and you just throw that in the list. And next thing you know, the today list is just a jumbled mess and it's not really helping you because it's not a well-organized list that you can just look at and do something. You have to look at it and think about that, but also, oh crap, what there was some other stuff, and it completely defeats the purpose. So it's really important to, in my, in my opinion, um, to make sure you're doing that exercise every morning, um, going through your list of various things and and try to assign what you're gonna do today. And it and actually it's a good um sort of exercise to, you know, at the end of the day or the next morning, look, what didn't I do? Because it it helps, in my case, I'll I'll you know, speak to myself personally, it helps me realize I don't have as much time in the day as I think I have, or my brain tries to trick me into thinking I have. So, you know, if you end up having a lot of stuff not done on that list at the end of every day, it's like, okay, let's recalibrate what you can actually do in a single day. Um, especially, you know, some days are busier than others. You may have external commitments, you know, outside work, whatever. But yeah, this getting things done has been super, super helpful for me. And as a part of that, the specific tool I use to implement this, and there's a bunch of these, this is just something that works for me, is software called Things. And it is um Apple, uh Apple only. There's there's no PC versions of it. But and there again, there are there are other pieces of software built for this that work fine on PC and our are cross-platform and and whatnot. But I really I've just been using this for a long time and I really like it. It's available on Mac, iPhone, iPad. So whatever, you know, if you're in the Apple ecosphere, whatever device you have in front of you, there's a things version for it. You know, the data is all linked. So wherever you are, your list is with you. And so for me, it's super help helpful. It it's very good at helping me organize um all that and and kind of sticking to this, uh, getting things done methodology. Um, and uh, you know, the one thing I would say to look to look at or or keep in mind is is sort of overcommitting to the today list and just randomly throwing stuff in there and getting away from it being today as opposed to ah this week I'll do this. And for me, I tend to it tends to start with eh, I'll put a bunch of stuff for this weekend, which is fine, but then it starts slipping into uh I'll get this stuff done this week. So um, so highly recommended. Um read the book, um and and you know, if it speaks to you, then then give it a shot. Getting things done by David Allen. Highly recommended. Well, it is time for the part where I talk about what I've been listening to um lately, and because first and foremost, as always, I am a fan of spoken word audio. And this week I want to talk about something that's just super exciting to me, prefacing this by saying the internet is absolutely amazing. You can find anything, and if you recall or if you didn't listen to the first podcast, the thing that started me out on this whole uh journey into spoken word audio land was a two-cassette um two-cassette audio drama uh recreation of the classic novel Treasure Island. And I got that as a kid for Christmas one year. I have no idea how how old I was, but I was very young. And I listened to that until the tape broke, and it's I'm pretty sure I repaired it at least once and you know got thrown away long, long time ago. And I haven't heard that in I don't know how many decades, a long time now. Um, and I've periodically searched the internet to try to find out information about it, and I never I never could be able to uh to find an actual copy of it. It's it had been a while, but then when I you know started down this sort of more focused journey to try to do all this stuff, I went and looked again and I was able to find out it was a um production by Mind's The Mind's Eye. Um, and they did a bunch of classic book uh dramatizations, um, not just audiobooks. Later they turned into a different company. I think it was called Sound Deluxe, and they were one of the earlier leaders in audiobooks. But these earlier ones um through Mind's Eye were classic books, and I think they were more targeted um towards young people. Um, and sure enough, Treasure Island was one of them. Now, the rights to all these recordings is murky, you know, it went from Mind's Eye to Sound Deluxe, and then I think went out of business, and so the actual rights holders to the recordings are are murky and they're not available anywhere officially. But good lord, the internet, there they were, four uh separate mp3 files. If you don't remember cassettes or weren't around back then, two sides, so that's you know, two cassettes, both sides, the whole thing. So I downloaded that and listened to it recreating my childhood. I'd throw in AirPods as I was going to sleep and just listen, listen to a file a night, you know, a quarter of it a night, and wow, that was a blast from the past. They were actually, you know, for the time, fairly well done. The uh, you know, the sound design and music maybe wasn't uh what could be done now, but uh as soon as I heard the voice of the guy who played, or or maybe woman, I'm not entirely sure, who played uh young Jim Hawkins, um, one of what I kind of the protagonist of the whole thing, the the kid who who sets out on this voyage with pirates, um his voice, as soon as I heard it, I was just transported back. And again, I haven't heard this in decades. I I had no you know conscious memory. I couldn't tell you what it sounded like until I heard that, and it it all just like somewhere deep in my brain, that's still embedded. And even more than that, was the the person who played who uh did the voice of Long John Silver could not be a more perfect voice of Long John Silver. It's absolutely amazing, great voice actor. I to so far I have not been able to figure out who the uh voice actor was. I I don't know if it was you know an actual actor or just strictly a VO guy, but oh man, it was great. And I love the story of Treasure Island. Actually, you know, every five or so years I'll go and go back and read the book. Um, but this was it's a really fun adaptation, especially you know, if you're a kid. Um and it it made me think, you know, someday I'm gonna update this and and do uh a modern production of this because you know it's so ingrained in who I am. Um the biggest problem there would be uh you have to have British actors, um British voice actors. It wouldn't work with anybody else. But yeah, so that's great. That's what I've been listening to. It it completely reaffirmed my belief in what I'm doing right now, and um it was great, yeah. So highly recommended if you uh I'll leave a link somewhere, it's uh in the Internet Archives. You can do a search for Mind's Eye Treasure Island audio files and it'll pop up. Um so if you're interested, go listen. It's great. And uh I believe that will do it for this week. So until next week, go out and listen to something interesting.