Back in September of last year, I started podcasting my novel “Assam & Darjeeling” on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Overall, I stuck fairly close to a weekly-ish schedule for new episodes, not realizing that it was going to be almost a year before I was finished with the project.
Almost a year.
The manuscript is 147,500 words long. That’s a big hunk of prose to sit down and read into a microphone. I finished recording the Epilogue last night. There’s 87 episodes out there on iTunes and that adds up to about a gigabyte of data. Overall, it’s over 23 hours of audio, which is just about a day.
It’s worth mentioning that every hour of finished audio typically takes twice as long to record, edit, process, and upload to the server — a feat so impressive that, as Ricky Jay would say, I am forced to point it out myself.
I have to admit, I learned a lot as I went along. I made mistakes, both in the technical execution and in my own performance as a reader. But reading things out loud is an excellent way to refine and polish a piece, no matter how long it is. I found things that needed fixing throughout the book, found things that could be better, and found points that needed clarification. I even changed a few plot points here and there, because they occurred to me during the recording process and I realized they were better than what I’d written.
I’m fairly certain that the quality of the recording got better as well, week to week. Those first episodes are a little rough, but I think it got smoother as I went along.
I don’t know how many characters there are, but I made a conscious effort to give each one their own voice, inflection, and accent. There were interesting little moments, especially near the end where I had to go back and check voices I’d used in some of the earliest episodes because I couldn’t remember, for instance, what Charlie or Seth sounded like.
And then there were the two episodes I had to record over again because I (fortunately) realized that once Jee’s [REDACTED] were [REDACTED], she’d speak with a lisp and I’d forgotten to give her one. So if you think she sounds like Cindy Brady — well, I’m sorry for it.
Also . . . there were points in the last few chapters where my emotions got the best of me. I went over lots of edits in those tracks, rerecording the parts where I started to cry. It’s hard to not feel self-indulgent, crying over your own work. But there it is.
I’d like to think I wasn’t the only one.
Because of my relative lack of experience, I didn’t have the presence of mind to install any kind of tracking on the podcast (and iTunes doesn’t provide any stats), so I have no idea how many people are subscribed to it or what they think of it. I assume if they’re listening, that means they like it.
But it’s just divination on my part, I’ve no real way of knowing how many are listening or what they think of it. I have little hints of it here and there, mainly through comments from listeners on a few of the social networks or in a smattering of e-mails that have come in.
(A commercial break: If you’re listening to it, I’d love to hear from you. And don’t be afraid to post a review/rating on iTunes.)
There was one common opinion from everyone who knows me personally and tried to listen to it: They just couldn’t take it, listening to my voice. They pretty much unanimously hated it.
Not the writing. My voice.
And here I was trying so hard.
It’s odd to be done and know that it’s still out there, that people are still listening to it and catching up with the story. I expect I’ll get new listeners as well as time goes on. I’m looking forward to that.
If you’ve been listening, if you’ve made it this far, thanks very much for hanging in there. If you want more, the good news is that there’s another one of my books available on iTunes. It’s called “Matters of Mortology” and you can find the links for downloading it here.
(Another commercial: If you’re reading this and aren’t listening to “Assam & Darjeeling” but would like to give it a try, there are links for downloading it here. Hope you like it.)
Overall, I enjoyed the experience and I’ve been gratified with the response. I won’t say I’ve caught the podcasting bug, but it’s given me some interesting ideas that I’m looking forward to trying out.
So . . . in about a week’s time, I’ll be starting a new podcast. This one isn’t centered on a specific work, fortunately. It’ll be more of an anthology with each episode structured around a theme — think “This American Life” combined with a writers’ workshop.
As such, it’ll be open to submissions from other writers. I’ll be posting more information about all of this in a day or two, along with some of the upcoming themes that I’m planning on covering. I’m looking forward to reading some of my shorter work as well as opening things up to other writers.
Watch this space.