Geocached BtC Transcript

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[Intro music plays]

Woman’s Voice:

This is Behind the Cut. The companion show to Not About Lumberjacks.

[Music fades out]

Christopher Gronlund:

For this year’s anniversary episode of Behind the Cut, I asked listeners if they had any questions about Not About Lumberjacks, now that it’s crossed the five-year mark. I got some great feedback, and hope this even more-than-usual behind-the-scenes look at the show is as cool to you as it was to me.

As always, this is a peek behind the show and likely contains some spoilers. Also, I swear. You’ve been warned…

Now…onto the questions!

Question One:

Friend of the show, Curtis Hart, asked how I came up with the name, Not About Lumberjacks?

You’d think I would have covered this by now…

There’s a podcasting conference called Podcast Movement. The last time it was in Texas was 2015. I went into the conference knowing I wanted to do a solo show that would allow me to really focus on quality. A friend named Rick Coste does a show called Evolution Talk, and I’ve always loved the quality and effort of each episode.

One of the keynote speakers at Podcast Movement in 2015 was Roman Mars, who does 99 Percent Invisible. He mentioned that he’d love to see a show similar to his, but focusing exclusively on video games. Obviously, I’m not the person for that show, but I did think about creating a show like his, investigating the overlooked corners of things, but based on books. However…that would require a staff and a LOT of effort. Really, it would be a full-time thing.

The first podcast I ever did was recording and releasing my first novel, Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors, in 2010. Talking about Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors with people at Podcast Movement, I realized the new show I wanted to do would have to be fiction.

Because I was so focused on novels at the time, I’d not written short fiction for years. So, as I thought about it more, I knew I wanted to create a show focusing on my short stories…at least in part to get me back to writing short fiction.

Of course, it needed a name and tagline for each episode…and if you listen to enough things that I do, it’s probably apparent that I like strange names and taglines that become memorable. I do a podcast with a good friend called Men in Gorilla Suits, and our signoff is “Chill the fuck out, and make the damn thing.” People really like the name and that tagline. So I knew I wanted something sort of like that.

In 2015, the whole hipster lumberjack aesthetic was still kind of a thing. As I wandered the floor of Podcast Movement, the name popped into my head: Not About Lumberjacks. I wish I could say I put more thought into it and that there’s more purpose behind the name, but it just popped into my head. Something about lumberjacks, but not about lumberjacks.

And I knew I could play with that look for the site’s design…and maybe even do photo shoots in the woods in flannel shirts and stuff. It didn’t take long before the sign-off, “Be mighty, and keep your axes sharp,” followed.

I thought the name was funny because I could insist that I’d never write a story about lumberjacks, but each November, work in lumberjacks to the anniversary episode, while still not making the tale fully about lumberjacks.

Fans of the show love playing along with the name as much as I do, especially around people not familiar with the show.

So…with that much in my head, I left Podcast Movement early that Sunday and went home to brainstorm. That’s how it all happened.

Mary Salerno asked two things: One – Have you ever found yourself at a point where you should have a sound effect and you don’t have one ready? What do you do in a case like that?

And…Do you record sound effects and drop them in here and there? And if you do, how do you know where to drop them in?

Great questions, here!

Especially early on, I wrote stories, recorded them, and then…as I went through putting the audio files together and layering in music, I’d go to a site called freesound.org and get sound effects as I needed them.

Now that I’m more organized and familiar with the process, I read or listen to the narration track and make notes of sounds I might want to drop in. Where I can, I like recording my own sounds. A good example of this is in the recent story, “Geocached.”

There’s a scene where the main character finds a set of wisdom teeth in a metal container. I could have found a sound of something rattling in a canister on freesound.org…maybe even something being poured from the canister. But it’s a very specific sound effect.

The dentist who removed my wisdom teeth gave them to me after the surgery, and I kept them all these years, seriously thinking, “Ya know, one day, these might come in handy!” And they did.

I take the list of sound effects I need to make (and all the items I need to make these sounds), and I go back into a closet where it’s quiet and create these sounds. Later, I upload the sounds I make to freesound.org to return the favor.

Between sounds I create, some sound effects I have rights to, and freesound.org, I can always find what I need.

As far as knowing when to drop them in, I try not to complicate the sound design on Not About Lumberjacks. In the most recent episode, I could have layered in outside sounds and other effects. But I found that by adding just a few things, here and there, it keeps the imagination churning as though the listener is reading it.

I once read an interesting thing about the 60s Batman TV show…how they shot in an open space and created the illusion of rooms with fabrics and windows and doors, much like the set of a play. I kind of view my sound design like that. There’s enough to put the listener there, but not so much that it becomes distracting or leaves nothing to the imagination.

When I read or listen to the narration, certain sounds leap out at me: rattling teeth in a metal canister, footsteps, and opening letters from envelopes or Ziploc baggies.

If it seems like an important sound, I’ll include it. But I don’t approach it like one would a film, with layers of ambient sounds and every singlebreath.

If you hear a door open and some footsteps as a character enters a room, that’s plenty. Right there, you’ve put the listener in the place. I do admire those who create room tones and echo templates to create a sense of every single different place in a story, but at the same time, I often find it distracting. As a listener, when there’s that much sound going on, I focus on it instead to the story.

 In my mind, it becomes too much, like a Web designer in the mid 90s using the blink tag everywhere, or that manager who thinks every fly-in animation and sound is great in a PowerPoint presentation.

And so…I try dropping in just enough to put the reader in the story, but allow their imaginations to fill in the gaps.

Cynthia Griffith wonders if I’m planning on doing more with promotion, including something with Instagram? She likes Instagram Stories as a way to keep something more lively out there all the time. So…here are my thoughts on past, present, and future promoting:

In the past (and even presently), I’ve never really promoted Not About Lumberjacks; in part, because I had two reasons for creating and releasing the show:

One—I wanted to get back to writing short stories. And two—I wanted a body of work out there that I could point to when querying agents and others in publishing with novels.

Because of that, whether people listened or not didn’t really matter to me.

Now, though, the show has become very important to me. I’ve enjoyed few creative endeavors as much as I’ve enjoyed putting together episodes of Not About Lumberjacks. So, I finally do want to promote it more.

Of course, I’m doing well to keep chugging along with my day job, having a life, writing novels, doing Men in Gorilla Suits, and writing and producing episodes of Not About Lumberjacks.

Adding a YouTube channel or something on top of that would be even more. So…I’ve kind of avoided it, even though it’s something I’d love to do.

But I should promote Not About Lumberjacks more. Like Cynthia, I enjoy Instagram Stories. I have friends who enjoy discussing Not About Lumberjacks on Facebook, and I’m lucky to chat on Twitter with others creating audio fiction and audiodramas.

I’m friends with Sean Howard, one of the snazzy minds behind the audiodrama Alba Salix and the actual-play podcast, The End of Time and Other Bothers…among many other things. Sean’s a ridiculously busy person.

Sean is also the kind of marketer the marketing industry needs: he’s genuine and generous. He shares sooooooo much about how they promote their shows and all that they do on Patreon.

For years, I’ve always been a bit contradictory when Sean says all people creating shows must advertise them. Not necessarily paid advertising but promoting them and making an effort to track growth…and what causes those increases and drops.

Because my goal has always been using the show to keep me writing and presenting a body of work, none of those things mattered to me at the time. But now…as more people listen and let me know they enjoy the show, I want to do even more with it.

So, I do want to promote it more in 2021. I’m still not sure to what extent and on which platforms, but Sean’s right: if you’re putting a thing out there, why not put a little bit more effort in to let people know it exists?

I can point agents and others to the show as a body of work, but it would be even better if I could also point them to a following eager to support all I write and record. So, much of what I plan to do the rest of 2020 is thinking about how I’m going to promote Not About Lumberjacks in 2021. If you have any ideas, let me know.

Mark Felps asked a trio of questions:

• One—How long does editing take?
• Two—What’s the most common editing procedure?
• And Three—What software do you use?

All great stuff, here.

If I think about the time I put into episodes and weigh it against what people would normally consider a return on investment (that is, does it make money, raise one’s profile…stuff like that), I’d be wise to quit doing Not About Lumberjacks.

With thirty-three episodes, I’ve probably put one-thousand six-hundred hours into the show. On average, most episodes get 40-50 unique listens in the first week, with most creeping up a little above 100 downloads. Quite a few of the older episodes are over 200, and the few most popular episodes are up around 300 unique listens. (It’s a good thing I’ve not been after a large audience these past five years.)

So…specifics. Okay, writing a story usually takes me eight to forty hours, depending on length and complexity. If it’s something literary, it takes me a lot longer than something like “Geocaching,” [sic] which I almost knocked out in a day.

Recording usually takes me one to two hours…and then cutting all the takes and closing gaps up to make it sound like I read out loud much better than I actually do can take four to eight hours. (Reading out loud is very difficult for me, and sometimes it takes a dozen tries to get through certain lines.)

Finding and layering music usually takes an hour or two…and sound effects can run two to four hours of searching or making them…and then dropping them in.

I spend probably two to four hours on transcripts, and then another one to two hours working on processing things and getting it all online. So, it can take 20-60 hours in total to produce an episode from idea to getting it in your ears. (And that doesn’t even account for these behind-the-scenes episodes, supporting each story.)

It’s likely that I could get some of the editing done faster if I used a better program to put things together. I use an open-source program called Audacity, which does the job, but there are much better programs out there. I wouldn’t recommend the way I edit things because I cut everything from beginning to end and Audacity is a destructive program. By that, I mean if I cut some sound, it’s gone…whereas most audio programs allow you to remove unwanted takes and trim bits in chunks, but get things back easily if you need them.

When I see others share their editing processes, I see all these pieces of audio that are easy to move around if you need to insert something new. It’s likely that Audacity can shift all the tracks into alignment if I drop something in later—not just the one track that I add to—but I’m very cut and paste in putting things together.

My process looks like this (again, I don’t recommend you do things this way): I have one longass audio track of the narration. I open the previous episode’s mix and save that file with a new name. I cut out the previous narration track, sounds, all those things…leaving just the intro and outro music and sounds. (Yeah, I know I should have a template with those things already set up. This is just the way I do things.)

I paste the current narration track in and then…I start at the beginning and think, “Okay, I need music here…I need it to come in, fade out, and then linger until going away at this point…” I drop sound effects on other tracks and, if needed, paste in room tone (which is essentially silence in my case), that extends the gap in narration if a sound takes up some space and runs longer that the pause in narration.

On the rare occasion I’m like, “Oh, shit, I forgot something major and I must put something new in at this point!” I paste in the same amount of silence on every single track so everything shifts farther down in my timeline. And then once it’s in place, I trim all that until everything’s back in alignment. (Seriously, don’t do things the way I do!)

I often think about changing to a better program or spending more time learning all I can do with Audacity, but my time is limited. I know that I’d save time in the long run, but it would also mean quite some time spent learning instead of releasing more episodes…and I’d rather get new stories out than spending even more of my free time working on the show.

With a few exceptions, most people I know who become obsessed with productivity tinker to the point they never produce much—if anything at all.

It’s always been my nature to jump in and figure things out on my own, and rarely is the way I do something ideal. But…despite that, I usually have a larger creative body of work than most people who tell me to try doing things their way.

So again…while I wouldn’t recommend my process to anyone, it works for me. (At least right now.)

Finally, Jennifer Moss asks two questions:

What fiction podcasts and novels do you enjoy listening to and reading? And…Is it easier to do a solo episode or have guest narrators?

Good questions…

I don’t listen to a ton of fiction podcasts. When Rick Coste was producing audio fiction, I was a fan of what he did—particularly The Behemoth and its sequel, Izzy; Bryar Lane, which is my favorite piece of audio fiction I’ve ever listened to; The Fiona Potts Interview; Inhale, which is a really cool superhero tale; and Pixie, which is so damn charming. I’m also a fan of Fable and Folly’s, The Axe and Crown, which is the kind of tavern you hope to come across when playing Dungeons and Dragons.

When it comes to narrated fiction, Levar Burton Reads is always great. And even though it wasn’t a podcast, when Ben Loory was reading fiction live on his Instagram account, I loved that. Also, I think Taylor Zabloski’s The Dog is Dead is the most overlooked fiction podcasts ever! Seriously, go listen to it. It’s fourteen stories told in second person, which isn’t easy to pull off, and then a really cool fifteenth episode where he shows how all the stories tie into each other.

Mostly, though, when it comes to podcasts and fiction, I listen to far more interviews with writers, with Brad Listi’s Otherppl being my favorite podcast. I prefer reading fiction, which brings me to the novels Jennifer asked about…

Novels and short stories influence Not About Lumberjacks more than anything. The show is very different than others in that it’s not based on genre or following any particular theme. There’s a fair bit of literary fiction on my show, and literary fiction tends to not do so well when recorded…unless, of course, it’s Levar Burton narrating a more famous work.

My favorite novel is Robert Olmstead’s A Trail of Heart’s Blood Wherever We Go, and I’ll always adore Jeffrey Ford’s The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque. In fact, I adore everything Jeffrey Ford does because he could write genre fiction and then turn around and write one of the most literary things you’ll ever read.

Looking at some recent books back here in my office (and on my phone), there’s stuff by Peg Alford Pursell, Chuck Wendig, Tayari Jones, Stephen Graham Jones, Natalia Sylvester, Rubén Degollado, Alex George, Ann Patchett, Jess Walter, Charlotte McConaghy, and Peter Geye. Currently, I’m finally reading On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, which is just so damn beautiful.

But I’ve also been working through Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar novels again and, when I just need a random short story, I read the next thing in The Big Book of Modern Fantasy, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. Also, until my end, I will always maintain that comic books and graphic novels are some of the best things ever created!

I do lean toward literary fiction with quirky—or even outright fantastic elements woven in—but mostly, I just grab what sounds good to me. (I’ve found so many good books just by picking up something I never heard of.) It’s rare that I’ll read for escape, but not everything has to challenge me, either.

Regarding solo episodes or guest narrators, uhm…

The goal since the start has always been to feature my own writing. I’ve had people ask if I’d publish their stories on Not About Lumberjacks, and the answer is always going to be a resounding no! What makes the show its own thing is it’s a place for my quirky or sometimes serious little stories.

So, while all the stories are all my own, I’ve never been insistent on being the sole narrator…especially when a story features a female protagonist.

The first Not About Lumberjacks story narrated by someone else if the fourth episode, “Horus,” about a writer’s assistant who gets more than she bargained for with her boss’ parrot. My wife, Cynthia Griffith narrated it because…it seemed weird for deep-voiced me to narrate a story in which all the characters are women. Nobody wants to hear that!

There’s another reason I like having others narrate stories: I’m dyslexic. I have a very hard time reading out loud.

So…making the solo episodes is not easy for me, but I like having control over sound and schedule. With Cynthia narrating, it’s still done in-house, so to speak, so it works out well.

But, obviously, I’ve had others narrate episodes. In some ways it’s easier because, like I said, narrating isn’t easy for me, but in other ways it’s harder because there’s more to organize. In episodes like the annual Christmas show I do, where there are a handful of stories, if I use different narrators, the stories sound different because they used different microphones and they’re all in different spaces.

There’s an anniversary episode, which is an audiodrama called “Waking the Lumberjack,” that I both love and hate. I loved working with a cast of voice actors, but…I hate that the quality of some of the recordings didn’t match up. Even having help equalizing everything, it sounded disjointed to me, even when laying in more sounds to mask these differences.

But I do love working with others and seeing how they interpret something I’ve written. There are a couple moments in the latest story, narrated by Jesse Harley, that I definitely couldn’t have pulled off as well as he did.

I recently asked people online if they like episodes with other narrators, or if they prefer me telling my own stories. Results were mixed, with a preference toward me narrating my own stories.

So, I’ll likely pull back most narration to my wife and me…especially for the more heart-felt stories I guess I’m kind of known for. Stories that seem more “me…” even though it’s an effort for me to narrate, are still—in many ways—easier to do on my own (or with Cynthia). I can record and edit according to my schedule, and there will always be a consistent sound from episode to episode.

But other times, I’m not the right voice for certain characters. So even though it can be a bit more difficult working with others, it’s worth it to me to have a story seem more genuine when narrated by the right person.

Ideally, I’d love to be able to bring narrators in and record on my gear while I run sound. I’ve had some narrators run through some recordings because sometimes life gets in the way of things…or I find myself spending more time cleaning up plosives—those little p-p-pops—because someone narrating didn’t use a pop filter or decent windscreen.

But none of my recordings are perfect. I record in a space that has some echo, which is something I want to fix with a portable sound booth soon. So, I don’t mind that some episodes sound different than others.

This is all a very long way of saying I prefer doing everything on my own, but that also, I do love working with friends. I find it easiest to do all on my own, even when guest narrators deliver solid narration with no mistakes…while I might read the same line a dozen times before finally getting it right.

Maybe if this were a fulltime thing, I’d find it much easier having others narrate—even though there are more logistics to consider. There are times day job responsibilities pop up and even get in the way. Being able to adapt and create the show around life’s demands is easier than giving someone a deadline and then realizing I have time to get ahead of schedule, but…I can’t expect others to adapt to my schedule during those times.

If I weigh all the pros and cons, it’s easiest to do it all on my own, but probably not as fun.

Thanks for the questions, everybody. Here’s to the next five years!

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Thank you for listening to Not About Lumberjacks and Behind the Cut. Theme music for Behind the Cut is a tune called “Reaper” by Razen. Visit nolumberjacks.com for information about the music, the episodes, and voice talent.

The now-annual Christmas episode is right around the corner. It’s four somber tales with a light-hearted story about a genie breaking things up. Seeya in December!

Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!