You spend all your time wading through bits of paper, and all the whys and wherefores of setting up your business, then there’s too many late nights/early mornings and all that guilt as you’re torn between serving family and trying to make something for yourself. You end up feeling so far removed from why you started the process in the first place that the original cause seems to have got lost. But then you experience the thrill of a recording sessions with 4 very diverse and talented writers reading their own work and you remember why you got the snowball rolling.
After the initial process of identifying potential writers, contacting them and explaining what you’re trying to achieve, I need to prepare for the recording session. This means I take a day or two out, find a comfy chair and, in the interests of work of course, read their books from cover to cover and become completely immersed in another world for the duration occasionally breaking off only to snack on Jaffa Cakes (cake or biscuit?) or to jot down a few questions that I think the potential listeners of listenupnorth.com might like to ask. It’s at this point, I suspect that I have created the best job in the world for myself. Despite this, breakfast on the morning of a recording is usually a sickly and tense affair and my recurring nightmare is that I’m stuck in my kitchen making an endless pile of sandwiches whilst everybody arrives at the studio and wonders where the hell I am.
On this occasion I arrive at Core Music studios with Teen 2 to help out as hostess and enough buffet lunch to feed the 5 thousand. Dan has decided not to set up in the studio upstairs but because we are capturing single voices without sound effects,creates a simpler mini studio in the middle of the building with duvets draped over stands to create a recording booth. Good job I’d told the writers not to expect the BBC. I have allocated one hour slots for each reader, I plan that this should give them time to warm up, read into the microphone, do any re-reads and answer a few questions. If someone makes a glitch whilst recording or suddenly has the urge to cough, then the great thing about audio is that they can just go back and re-read from the beginning of that sentence or paragraph.
Because there isn’t room for both the writer and myself inside the booth, I have to ask my questions in advance in one go and then the writer’s answer will be edited in after each of my questions. Inside the booth, surrounded by a wall of duvets is quite comforting, a bit like being inside a giant womb. Despite this Heath Robinson set-up, it does the trick because when I listen back to the recordings, it all sounds very professional.
Initially, Nik Jones reads the introduction to his tense and disturbing 9987 (Tonto Books). I really admire Nik who, after a hard day’s work as a teacher, gets down to his laptop and gets those words on the page. He really knows how to rack up the tension and the unnerving thing is – it’s the kind of story that could happen in your street. And a word of warning to the faint-hearted – make sure you close your curtains at night!
Next comes Degna Stone, a complete change with her poetry. Degna runs the new writing strands for The Live Theatre in Newcastle and listening to her as she reads her work (as yet unpublished) is both a joyful and a moving experience. All writers are influenced by their life experiences whether consciously or not and Degna has written about her children, her Caribbean parents and her memory of her late work colleague, the legendary North East writer Julia Darling.
Peter Bennet arrives with his wife and we enter the rest room where Teen 2 is engrossed in a book and has only put a third of the sandwiches out. Apparently she thought that I has brought 2 tubs of ice cream for afters! It’s nice to have a chat about the writing scene and mutual acquaintances. Peter and I realise that we both came into writing late in life at 40 years old and we both hope that we are spared long enough to write down everything that’s still inside us!
I go over the necessary requisite contracts that’s required for each writer to allow me to use their work (Contributor’s Contract) and the performance of their reading (Standard Clearance Agreement) on my website. My solicitor has drawn these up for my business as using other people’s performances and their work could potentially be a legal nightmare and the last thing I want is to be taken to court for infringing someone’s copyright. This way, I hope that there will be no misunderstanding and everyone knows where they stand.
After lunch, we say good-bye to Degna and Peter prepares to read. I first knew Peter Bennet when he was my tutor at a WEA English literature class several years ago and he was instrumental in re-igniting my love of the written word and introducing me to the Northumberland poets. I feel very privileged that he agreed to read for my website, not only from Glass Swarm (Flambard Press) which was was shortlisted for the 2008 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and named the Poetry Book Society Choice for Autumn 2008 but also his latest work, as yet unpublished, a long poem based on a Northumberland legend.
As Peter leaves, Sarah Shaw arrives and after some discussion we decide that she should read the beginning of her book to set the scene and introduce the main characters. ‘Make it Back,’ (Tonto Books) alternates between an English nurse in The Spanish Civil War and England, 50 years later, when the granddaughter seeks to unravel the mystery surrounding her grandmother. It is a beautifully written, evocative story and deserves great success.
All in all, a very worthwhile but exhausting day. Dan takes away the recordings for further editing and I take away the substantial remains of the buffet lunch. Ah well, that’s Wonderhubby’s packed lunch taken care of for next week.
