Bestselling sci-fi writer warns
"don't write for success"

Blazing Reader,

I leave Canada for my new home in the Netherlands on Tuesday. It's Friday night and the Much Ado About Corona audiobook still has about six hours of audio proofing and six hours of studio retakes to go. Falling ill for five days was terrible timing.

Fortunately, the audio recording engineer at In Tune Audio is willing to work on Saturday and Sunday. That way, all the retakes should be wrapped up by Sunday afternoon. It's ideal that I finish recording in the same studio (versus finding a new one in Europe) as every recording booth has a unique sound. I want to avoid a patchwork audio effect.

Recording, proofing and re-recording lines I blundered, along with learning how to pronounce all the foreign words (try saying Gaagige Minawaanigozigiwining three times fast), has taken more than 100 hours of work. Maybe 200. I haven't been counting. It's been time-consuming and expensive, and will take months to just break even through sales of the audiobook (though I'm considering launching a big kickstarter campaign).

At some level, it seems crazy to put so much time and money into an artistic project that has uncertain financial returns. But I've created a story that has exceeded all my expectations, and I know that when death finds me I will not regret all the time, energy and dinero I've put into this novel.

As Frank Herbert said, "When I was writing Dune there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book's success or failure.... You don't write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you're really doing it, that's all you're doing: writing."

Or... recording.

John C.A. Manley

P.S. For a photo from the recording studio (with my lovely Dutch wife) plus more about the fun challenges of recording a 500-page audiobook, check out this post from last month.

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.