Blogging

Hi, it’s been 2 and a half years since my last post; so this is a quick “heads up” that you’ll start to see posts from me now and then. If you subscribed at some time in the past and don’t want to receive these posts any more, please feel free to unsubscribe. Otherwise, I’ll do my best to share a thought or 12 now and then.

It’s been quite a while again since my last post. When I started this blog over 11 years ago, my goal was to write about one of my greatest passions: voiceover work. At the time I still had a corporate job, one that I mostly enjoyed. Nothing is ever completely perfect, of course. I had to travel quite a bit more than I wanted, though the upside of all that travel turned out to be opportunities to connect with a bunch of my co-travelers in the world of voiceover and to do so in person rather than just online.

The VO-BB was a wonderful resource for arranging those in-person connections, and it’s still one of my favorite corners of the Internet. A quiet little spot where folks of all sorts of levels of experience in voiceover hang out and exchange thoughts, ideas, encouragement and, well, most than a little fun.

Of course, in the 11+ years since this blog started, Facebook has grown to its massive size and reach and you’ll find lots of voiceover related groups there. Some are quite helpful. Some, not so much. Since different people have different opinions about which are which, I’ll leave it to you to make up your own mind on that question. Much the same can be said about the various voiceover groups on LinkedIn, though I would suggest the percentage of “not so much” is somewhat higher there.

Back when I started there were just a tiny group of us blogging about voiceover. Now, the number is legion and climbing. When I started, I tried to keep an up-to-date blogroll of every voiceover blog. But a few years ago, I realized that not only was that becoming an impossible task, I couldn’t even keep up with which of the links in my current blogroll are dead or very nearly so. It’s long past time that I make a thorough clearing of the underbrush.

My goal of writing about voiceover remains. My desire to get back to posting on a more regular basis has been growing of late so I will do my best to be more regular about these posts. And, to wrap up these thoughts for today, here’s one last thing I’d like to suggest. Whatever else you do in your interactions with your voiceover co-travelers, don’t be a dick.

My friend Johnny George blogs about voiceover. I’ve just added his blog to my blogroll.

For some time now, when people have asked me how I like working in voiceover full time my reply has been “It’s a lot better than working for a living.” Now, in truth there is “work” involved in voiceover. Meeting deadlines. Exceeding expectations. Delivering the performance people are looking for. These things don’t happen by accident. It does take concentration, effort, persistence and experience to deliver the goods in the studio. And to deliver the audio in the requested format. And so forth and so on.

But, having grown up on a farm in central Minnesota, I can tell you that voiceover is nothing like what I knew as “working for a living” as I was growing. Stacking bales of hay, shoveling grain, and especially mucking out the barn after the milk cows where finished. That was real work.

Today, I’ve spent a few hours mucking out the blogroll here at the Voiceover Boblog. It was beginning to stink to high heaven frankly. Broken links. A couple of links leading to hacked sites filled with malware. Good grief. I’ve neglected the blogroll for far too long. But as of today, I’ve personally tested every link. Later today there might be new problems but for now, everything in the blogroll should lead where it’s supposed to lead.

Now, it’s time to get back to the audiobook I’m just about to finish, and get started on the pick-ups for the other audiobook that’s due in a couple of weeks.

Copyblogger offers 21 cogent suggestions about how to Be Interesting. My thanks to my friend Larry White for emailing me the link to this article.

While I like being part of popular movements and taking part in things that lots of other folks are taking part in, I also have this streak in me that, when it seems like everyone is going a particular direction, I like to take a different path.

You need to take your path. I need to take mine. Lots of the time we’re going to be traveling the same road, sometimes we’ll be heading in directions that have nothing to do with one another. I’m deeply grateful that you read this blog from time to time. Thank you.

When I started blogging nearly six years ago it was with the express purpose to talk about voiceover, which was at the time one of my life-long passions. Also at the time, it was a dream of mine to be working full-time and exclusively as a voiceover. I didn’t have any idea how I might be able to pull that off, with a wife and four children and being the sole “bread-winner” of said family.

But persistence, hard work and divine providence eventually led me (almost 2 years ago now) to leave my corporate job and strike out on this voiceover-only path. One unanticipated consequence of that shift is that it has actually become a bit harder to be consistent about my blogging now that all I’m doing (from a work point of view anyway) is voiceover. To you, my dear reader, I apologize for my inconsistent blogging of late. I will do my best to keep bringing you ideas and performances and people that I think will interest you. And to share with you, now and then, from my own well of experiences.

Kevin Delaney emails today with news about two free webinars he is holding tomorrow, Monday the 29th of November 2010 on the subject of blogging and voiceover.