I Made a Podcast. It Ruined My Novel.
It started on April Fools Day, 2020. I was laid off from my job as head of content at a cloud SaaS company because of Covid. Like so many others, I decided to use the time in lockdown to pursue a passion project — a podcast of my novel-in-progress, The History Singer.
My Podcast Was the Right Idea at the Wrong Time.
First, the back story. In the early 2000s, I ran a monthly interview program at a tech incubator in Ann Arbor, MI. I interviewed local business disruptors and creative thinkers. It was fun, and the program was popular. It was perfect for a podcast.
Bad Timing or Meant to Be?
But I didn’t act on the podcast idea because of life, work, and another passion project that consumed my attention, a fantasy-adventure novel for middle-grade readers. Henrietta Sharp and the Magic Lunch Box.
I published it as an eBook on Amazon in 2011, and that’s where it lives. The bones of the book are strong, but it could be so much better. I want to revisit it, change the audience to Young Adults (YA) and make it worthy of a larger audience. But that’s for another day.
Fast forward to my Covid layoff. This was the right time to start a podcast. So, I did. But for all the wrong reasons.
Wrong Reason #1: bad timing.
According to the podcast search engine, Listen Notes, 1,109,000 new podcasts started in 2020. It’s an understatement to say that the market was crowded. My indie podcast had little chance to break through, much less break out.
wrong Reason #2: a steep learning curve.
There was a lot to learn, like choosing the right equipment, a mic (USB or XLR), boom arm, and hanging my Gramma Daisey’s handmade quilts to reduce the echo. And I had to figure out Hindenburg Journalist Pro, my digital audio workstation (DAW). Everything was a new learning experience. Exciting and occasionally tear-inducing.
wrong reason #3: Mouth Noise.
And then, there was my voice.
A classically-trained singer by education, I didn’t think this would be an issue. But it was. I had mouth noise. These intrusive clicks and pops that go unnoticed when talking were amplified by the mic. And let’s not talk about my breathing. My air intake sounded like a dragon breathing fire. I had to learn an additional editing program to minimize my trash mouth. But it was a time-eating process that didn’t eliminate the imperfections that troubled me.
13 months and eight episodes later, I returned to work.
It was time to make a choice. Create season two of the podcast in my spare time or focus on finishing the novel the podcast was based on. I decided to focus on the novel.
It may be overly dramatic to say that my podcast ruined my novel. But it did delay the writing of it.