Editing is hard.
When we started recording our podcast, we had the idea that the best approach would be to record everything we possibly could say about each book of the Iliad, then edit it down to just the very best stuff — the funniest jokes, the smartest insights, the most completely correct and fully researched details. We did lots of takes, even came back and did some re-recording on occasion.
Then we sat down to edit them.
Neither of us had done significant audio editing before this, so we had to teach ourselves how to use Audacity, and then had to listen through the recordings and log them and create a rough cut and then refine that cut and smooth over the transitions and mix and master and add music and . . . you get the picture. It was more work than we expected, and we quickly realized that we weren’t going to be able to put out episodes nearly as quickly as we wanted.
We almost gave up. But instead, we persisted. And we gave a lot of thought to our recording process. After all, one of the things editing taught us was that our first take was usually pretty decent to begin with. Another was that the longer we talked the more tired we became, which didn’t help our wit or sparkle. And finally, we learned from listening to other podcasts and talking to other podcasters that many shows just recorded one take, basically live, and did little editing beyond adding music at the start and finish and running it through a quick noise filter.
That seems a much more sustainable model, so we’re shifting gears in our recording strategy to minimize editing and post-production time, and to get episodes ready to post much more quickly.
We still have several episodes recorded in the old way to edit. We’re getting faster, but we just talked a lot and then talked some more, so there’s a lot of editing work still to be done. That said, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and we’re looking forward to posting some episodes soon.
When, exactly? Well, we don’t want to make any promises that we can’t keep. We can say, a couple months, minimum. But at one point it was looking like years, and that’s what brought us to the brink of giving up.
So please hang with us a little longer. We’re slowly figuring this out, and we’re excited to start sharing our literary adventures with you!
— Robert
