[Listen]
[Intro music plays]
Woman’s Voice:
This is Behind the Cut. The companion show to Not About Lumberjacks.
[Music fades out]
Christopher Gronlund:
My good friend, Curtis Hart, requested this episode of Behind the Cut. He noticed there are times I tease an episode and then…well…I release it much later than planned.
Perhaps the best example of this is “Alone in HQ,” a post-apocalyptic office story I mentioned at the end of episodes for well over a year.
Curtis wanted to know what’s behind those lags in planning to release a story…to actually sharing the story with you all.
The simple version is I do this for free, in addition to working a full-time job. On top of that, while I’m not the most social person, I do spend time with friends and family—most notably, trying to visit my mom every week and then spending every other Saturday playing Dungeons and Dragons, which, right now during the current pandemic, I’m seeing everybody online. But when we when I get together with friends in person, that’s an evening dedicated to hanging out. And when it comes to Dungeons and Dragons weekends, it’s safe to say two Saturdays a month are consumed by that…and I can get a lot of writing, recording, and editing done on a Saturday.
I also produce another podcast called Men in Gorilla Suits. It’s a thing I do with a friend—and while its production is very streamlined and nowhere near as involved as Not About Lumberjacks, every other week, it still requires hours I could dedicate to this show.
And, of course, I do write other things.
* * *
To that point, let’s talk about novels. I’m currently shopping a novel around to agents and writing another. Because it’s a story requiring great amounts of research, time is also spent reading books pertaining to the story—and finding videos, photographs, and other material. And it’s a literary story, which requires more focus from me than putting a short story together in chunks.
I’m also a technical writer by trade, and that means I often focus on work a bit more around the software releases I support. Technical writing pays the bills, so it takes priority. And when my day job is more demanding, I’m not as able to focus on short stories AND novels.
Sometimes I spend more time on Not About Lumberjacks; other times, I dedicate all my fiction-writing time to novels. Especially during those times—with novels—it means I’m less likely to put out a new episode of Not About Lumberjacks.
* * *
Granted, there have been times I’ve put in overtime at work, time toward a novel, and still released episodes of Not About Lumberjacks. Here’s my not-so-secret: I started the show with a backlog of stories mostly (or completely) ready to record.
“Pepper” is the 31st story I’ve released for the show. If you factor in the Christmas episodes, with their multiple shorter works, 41 original stories exist on the site.
Of those, roughly half were already written. Meaning, if I needed to get an episode out during a busy point in my life, I could grab an old story and be well ahead in the most-lengthy part of most productions: the writing!
I’m now at a point that I have no old stories to record. Everything is new, so…I no longer have the luxury of planning an episode, realizing life is getting in the way, and falling back on an existing tale.
With very few exceptions, writing is the longest part of the process, and sometimes I’m not able to focus on new Not About Lumberjacks stories because I’m busy with work or other writing at the time.
* * *
When I factor in the time writing new stories, figuring out the production, recording, editing, creating and finding sounds and music, and then putting it all together, some episodes of the show have likely taken 40-60 hours to produce from that initial idea to something you can listen to for free. On average, I’d guess most take 20-30 hours.
I don’t view the creative things I do like a corporate return on investment. I have fun creating episodes, so…I make them. But when you factor in 40-60 hours spent on a thing that usually gets 40 listens in its initial weeks of release and then creeps up to maybe 75-100 listens—with rare stories listened to by 200 people—it’s not like there are throngs of people banging on my door, demanding episodes.
And while I care about every listener, Not About Lumberjacks comes with a certain reality for me: as much as I’d love it to be my day job (in addition to writing novels), it’s unlikely to ever happen. And that’s not me being gloomy—it’s just a fact: most people who set out to write fiction full time never will. You can wish to be a bestselling novelist all you want—even doing all you can to make it happen—but it’s like being a professional athlete: even some of the best in their fields never realize that dream.
And so…some days when I’ve been working long hours on a release at work, the last thing I want to do is eat dinner with my wife and then sit down to write stories and work on recording them until it’s time to go to bed…only to get up early and write at my day job the following morning.
More times than not, I just want to hang out with my wife. Sometimes I want to meet up with friends on a Wednesday or Thursday night. And other times, I just want to do nothing at all.
Sometimes, you want to have a little break.
* * *
All this is a way of saying that sometimes, stories just require more time.
I try keeping episodes of Not About Lumberjacks around thirty minutes or less. With the story “Alone in HQ,” there was so much more I wanted to do. Because it was framed as both an homage and a parody of Ayn Rand’s ANTHEM, I originally brought in a female character to match the protagonist of that story meeting a woman. But once I did that…I needed to build the relationship up more to pull off the planned ending.
And that added too much to the story, and took away much of what seemed to make the story charming.
In the end, I removed that story line entirely. But I struggled with the decision because there did seem to be something more with bringing in another character. I loved some of the scenes I wrote with the two characters, and what more I was able to say about corporate life with her presence.
But it would have meant the story bloating into novella range, much like the story it was framed around.
* * *
Sometimes it’s the writing that takes a long time. But other times, like “The Other Side,” it’s coordinating with other people and creating more involved effects that adds to how long it takes to create an episode. Mostly, though, it’s just a matter of wrapping up more pressing projects that get in the way of scheduling and releasing episodes.
I’d love Not About Lumberjacks to come out at least every other month. I’d love for the show to be my full-time job.
But that’s not my reality…
Effort doesn’t equal success. If it did, Not About Lumberjacks and everything else I do would be paying the bills.
Right now, the best I can hope for—and you as well—is that stories will come out when I’m able to make something new and set it loose upon the small following the show has.
And if that’s as good as it ever gets, that’s plenty-enough for me. I hope its good enough for you, too…or that at least you understand why it sometimes takes a while to get an episode out.
* * *
[Theme music fades in]
Christopher Gronlund:
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, episodes, and voice talent.
I’m not sure what story’s coming up next, but it’s likely going to be about a virus and dreams…Unless, of course, as I’ve discussed here, that story takes more time than expected and I work on something else in the meantime…
Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
[…] Episode Transcript >> […]