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Judith Bareham

Making the Leap


This week as August arrived, it had me reminiscing about finishing up school for the Summer as a kid in England, (because August for me still means vacation).

But more specifically, recalling those last wonderful days of the school term which heralded the soon to be weeks of freedom and lazy days of summer;

Sports days at school – if like me, you are British born you will intuitively have either a positive reaction or be repulsed by those two small words.

I’m not even sure it’s a thing anymore. Health and Safety probably deemed it unwise like so many other harmless pursuits.

For those not familiar with this tradition heralding the long -awaited summer holidays and the end of school, let me explain.

Around Middle school age; we were given the day off from lessons and sat on the sports fields in ‘team houses’, to encourage our fellow school mates in all kinds of races.

If you were athletically inclined, sported long legs, were agile and popular it was a fabulous day.

If however you were vertically challenged, petite, athletically gifted not so much and didn’t possess legs like a gazelle then, it was more humiliation than hurdles.

You can probably surmise into which group I fit.

It’s not that I mind sports or partaking in them. I like to run, play tennis, hockey and Netball with the best of them. But this was hurdles.

I never did master the hurdles leap and couldn’t fathom how to jump over in any way shape or form.

I simply ran and stopped. Every time.

I have a heap of empathy for horses in showjumping that simply stop before a jump and never make the leap.

It’s kind of scary and feels too large to contemplate.

Which brings me to my topic this week – Editing- the necessary behemoth of the audio-book narration world.

I am no lover of technology – ask my family about my relationship with Siri when I’m on the road.

‘Road rage’ for me has nothing to do with driving, let’s just say.

I had signed up for my first collaboration on a book with Audible and this was a necessary skill to learn and learn it quickly.

I loved the creative process as the characters became real and alive. We spent a lot of time holed up in my booth together.

This editing was a whole “other” and I often experienced the sense of stalling.

My viewing on You-tube probably seemed like I had an obsession with several guys with editing channels.

But I will rarely be beat so I attempted to overcome this one.

And slowly, after a plethora of ACX and various you tube tutorials and taking copious notes, I began to grasp it all.

Eventually, the files were all ready to upload. And then the excruciating wait as I wondered if I would be asked to fix a file.

So much waiting in this voice over thing. If you read my second post you will recall.

I alternately avoided and peeked at my inbox in case I saw a message from the tech department alerting me to a problem.

Two weeks later exactly, the beautiful phrase- “Congratulations your book has been approved for sale!”

The euphoria was real.

Now, I know I still have a ways to go and cannot consider after one editing experience to have arrived. But I leaped over the looming hurdle, was none too shabby and experienced a job well done feeling.

So, among many things, I am learning ad nauseum, how much patience really is not to be sniffed at and cannot be undermined.

But also, a sense of achievement that a month or two back I hadn’t a clue about compressing, room tone, normalizing or hard-limiting.

I guess I did make the leap after all.

Oh and go check it out – Mathamagical on Audible, Itunes, Amazon.


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