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I’m totally a list person. I love lists, they help me feel like I’m making progress when I’m tackling something big, and they help me not forget things when there’s a lot of moving parts. It’s been a little while since I’ve checked in with my goals list. In April I’d posted “36 in 365,” a list of goals to work towards within the next year. Here’s a partial update on where I am making some headway…

3. edit new commercial and animation demos

I’ve compiled and edited a new commercial demo. There was some material from my old demo that I felt was still very representative of my sound and range so I kept those in the mix. I find it really helpful to send my demo out to a few people for reviews before I commit to it. The voiceover community is very helpful if you’re willing to ask for help. My friends found a few things that could be improved upon and I feel more confident that I’m representing myself well with this mostly new material. I also have my imaging demo online, with voicework I do for a station in Tucson. I think nailing down 2 audiobook demos is next on the demo production list, but it feels good to have a new commercial demo put together.

6. stick to a realistic workout routine that fits my lifestyle (ongoing, check in every 2 months)

OK, oops, I forgot to check in back in June. :) However, since making this post, I’ve been more consistently working out 3 days a week. I’ve been thrown off a few weeks here or there with friends and family in town, but I’d definitely say it’s my routine. Isn’t that always the hardest part, building the routine and sticking with it?

15. learn how to use Photojunction —AND—

28. create parents’ albums with our wedding photos using Photojunction

15 – My husband Andy and I own and run a bi-coastal photography business, de L’oeil Photography, which primarily shoots weddings, family portraits and things of that nature. As part of the post-process, sometimes the newlyweds will budget for an album or a coffeetable book. Photojunction is the industry standard for book layouts, and it would be very helpful to our workflow if both of us knew our way around it. I attended an online seminar and spent some time creating page layouts until I felt comfortable with the program. One of my minors in college was in graphic design, so it reminded me of my time with InDesign or Quark, except more user-friendly.

28 – Andy led the charge on putting together a parent album of our wedding photos. We gave one away the other week and it seemed the bring back the joy of the day for them.

29. learn a new craft or take an old hobby up a notch

This one deserves a nod to our friends Michael and Jill, who have recently started a new delicious blog if you’re into frozen treats. I had their homemade mexican chocolate ice cream this Spring and went head over heels about the idea based on their results. The control over what I can put in homemade frozen desserts fits my leaner, greener way of approaching food preparation. Basically, it boils down to that I read labels and try to keep crap out of my body, like partially-hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, extra chemicals for color or preservatives that for the most part you don’t need if you can instead buy fresh or make from scratch. For a few years I’ve made our own bread in a breadmaker to get away from junky additives. Now, I’ve learned how to make our own sorbets (wow, that’s like half sugar – only made it twice) and my more typical treat: gelato. The favorite so far is blueberry-raspberry-pineapple. Yesterday I made my first attempt with lemon-lime gelato and found that that I’ll need to add less water and more sugar than my other recipes. It’s a delicious bit of trial and error, and definitely a new hobby others can appreciate!

Another round of updates coming later this week, including trips to not-so-faraway lands, how I’m not technically a crazy cat lady (even though we just picked up a stray) and my plans to grow stuff other than cactus in a 4ft x 8ft garden in the middle of the Sonoran Desert.

After much talk about the need to update my demos, how I want to update my demo, how if only I could find the time I would update my demo… I’ve done it. I suppose there was less motivation to get it done simply because my current demos weren’t bad, and they were still getting me a fair amount of work. However, I felt that I had better examples of my range and performance variety so it was time to revamp ye old commercial demo. Done, check it out on the homepage!

I also got back some imaging voicework material I do for a classic rock station and I like it much more than what I had set aside for an imaging demo. So you’ll see I now have an imaging demo posted to the homepage as well, comprised of mixed voice over from that station. The male talent on that station is Mark Maurer, also out of Arizona. Thanks to the guys at Krash Creative Solutions, based out of my hometown of Raleigh, NC!

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted on here. I know I’d set the personal goal of posting to my blog every week, but sometimes life happens offline, too.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past month talking shop, being critiqued by and critiquing and picking the brains of 3 very talented women. We met in LA at Pat Fraley’s Audiobook workshop. We all have the goal of doing regular work in the audiobook industry. The four of us have entered Scott Brick’s contest to highlight a new audiobook narrator and throw some work her way, and it would be wonderful if any or all of us make it to the top 25, or better. We know the top 25 will be announced online and I’d love to see some familiar names on that list when it comes out.

Through this process, I feel like I’ve been able to apply a lot of skills that I have and things I’ve been taught and after some practice to find my groove it’s become a comfortable thing for me. In college, I earned bachelor’s degrees in both English lit/writing/editing and in Psychology. Working in radio has not directly required the use of either of these, however they’ve been useful and helpful, especially in copywriting and also in adjusting to and understanding how to work with so many different personality types. Working on audiobook material feels like a homecoming of sorts. I can use the skill my parents have always said was unique and well-developed and underutilized in my regular work: my character voices.

Through narrative pieces, I can pull from the characteristics of many people I’ve met, standalone characters I’ve built, dialects I’ve heard, accents and ways of speaking from my travels and living in 3 vastly different parts of the country. I can also use my literary skills honed from reading classics and assigned pieces in college to make sure I’m really understanding the author’s intent and any allusions there may be to other stories or archetypes. The way of looking at people that I’ve learned through psych studies is more empathetic than I think I’d be without it. It’s helped me see a lady who cuts me off in traffic as someone who might be in a hurry to help a friend in trouble, instead of just thinking she’s some idiot who can’t drive and needs to have her license revoked* (*blog friendly version of my non-empathetic thoughts.) That comes in handy when “good” characters do “bad” things, or an “unlikeable” character is the protagonist.

Audiobooks seem to be the one place where my years in radio and voicework as well as my education all actually come together. It’s been a really good exercise to put a lot of effort and get a lot of feedback in this part of the voiceover world. I’m in the process of editing down a piece that I’ve read (one of my favorite short stories) that I eventually plan to offer on my site as a free download. There’s always so much to do, so many goals to tick off the list, and then you look and somehow it’s July already. I hope to get more blog posts in, but if I am absent for longer than a week then I may have more interesting things to write about when I return.

I’ve revised my “Retainer” page to better reflect some of the creative tasks I enjoy doing the most. Namely, creative problem solving. A well-written script can solve a lot of problems, from not reaching the right clientele to providing a general awareness campaign or rebranding an established company. A well-written script can avoid an even more dangerous problem – cementing the wrong message in the minds of consumers. Copywriting is a passion and talent of mine that I gladly offer directly to businesses.

I’ve also revised some of the production and voice over packages I was offering to radio stations, and have now included TV stations and cable companies some of these packages. For any of these packages, the starting price listed is for smaller markets with lower demand on production and VO services. The retainer packages are available on an individual basis. I won’t be taking on many retainers simply because of the time commitment. I want to maintain the level of quality I would provide if I had all my time to devote to just one client station or cluster. So, the openings I have in my schedule to take on monthly retainer clients is limited.

Finally, I recognize that often the biggest problem with having a high ratio of production orders to producers is simply getting the VO. Sure, your producer was hired because he or she also has a good voice, but when that person is on over 50% of the voiced pieces that air on your station, your messages have less impact in general because the same person is ‘endorsing’ every business in town. I expect to be of the most help to stations by offering dry, unprocessed but edited voiceovers of already-written copy. Voice variety is important, and I believe it reduces station-flipping during spotbreaks, but it often has to be sacrificed due to budget cutbacks. I hope my services can be an alternative for stations in this position.