I recorded the audio book for I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself this week. And it was shockingly delightful. Dare I say enjoyable.
It was also exhausting. Audio is hard work, which I’d somehow forgotten despite the fact I spent most of last year recording WILDER.
Reading your own book out loud can be terrifying. In addition to sometimes feeling like you’ve bumped into yourself, awkwardly dressed, in very bad lighting, it’s also when you discover all the tiny errors that have somehow been missed up until now. The words you have repeated. The sentences. This is normal…and one reason you should always read everything you write out loud at least once (which I did…so just imagine how many more there might have been if I hadn’t done so!). (Also, parentheses are challenging to convey with your voice! As you will see in the below clip. It can very easily give the impression you are stumbling over words when you’re just trying in invoke an aside.)(And I love me some parentheses.)
In the case of a memoir it can feel a bit like reading your diary out loud. Or worse. Particularly if what you’re writing about is painful, or sad, or both. I didn’t do the audio for No One Tells You This (my very dear friend, and now award-winning audio book narrator Allyson did! Something that never fails to bring me joy). And I’m not sure I could have done; the chapters about my mother would have been too upsetting. There are some passages about her in that book I’ve not read since writing them (shout out to my miracle-working agent, Lucy, who proofread those parts multiple times for me to save my having to do).
** apparently you can’t caption videos, but this is a short video I took of me reading the scene in the book where I come across the painting that’s now on the cover. **
This book, however, has nothing sad it in. Not really. But it definitely leaves me…exposed in the most literal way at times. A number of friends asked me if I was anxious about having to record those scenes. Which…the truth is by the time the book reaches this stage of publication there have been a lot of eyes on it, and it’s well down the road to becoming public property. Also, I think you don’t set out to write a book with a butt crack on the cover if you are easily mortified. That said, I’ve never done this before.
But actually, it was fine! As I was reading those passages, I kept saying to Maureen, the woman directing the recording, oh yes, this WAS great. If anything, I probably could have included a few more details (though I did glimpse an early review that remarked the book is a bit “spicier” than anticipated….but in a good way, it sounded like?).
I am sorry my French isn’t better. If you are an audio book person, all I can tell you is this recording is an excellent approximation of what it is like to actually be adjacent to me when I attempt the French language (sober, anyway…I think my verre de rosé gets better after I’ve had a few).
The entire experience, not just the sex scenes, was so much unexpected fun. In part, because Maureen is wonderful to work with. And partly because this book is fun. We kept having to pause the recording because we were laughing so hard. I cannot begin to tell you what a relief it is to enjoy your own book.
It’s also clear to me what chapters I think are going to be a challenge for readers. Like, you either are a person who wants six pages of me thinking on the page about what enjoyment means and how to access it as a woman, or you are a person who wants action and will get frustrated and walk away. (There is plenty of action, but much like life, it’s just not immediate.)
I like it. For better or worse, this book is a pretty good reflection of my brain. But I also recognize that it might not be everyone’s slice of cheese.
Either way, I walked away from the experience thinking of the Joan Didion line about Jordan Baker: “Jordan took her own measure, made her own peace…” Doing the audio book was an exercise in taking the measure of my own book. And while there are a few places I think I could have cut some things, I’m at peace with what’s there.
Good Decisions:
“Now, Women is being released by a major publisher cementing its place in the queer literary canon.” Come Party!
“A middle-aged mind is labyrinthine; the ego is wild, stubborn, perverse.” Hello from the other side. (Jenn Romolini has a newsletter!)