Grim Lessons in Ambition

So in the early weeks of May, I had a Plan. This Plan was big enough to deserve a capital "P," in defiance of various grammatical conventions: I Planned to record Matthew G. Lewis's Gothic novel, The Monk, in approximately nine weeks. This amounted to one chapter per week. This goal seemed, in the early days of May, perfectly doable.

Reevaluating this goal three weeks later, I realized that while defying grammatical conventions in the name of artistic ambition proved a most amusing exercise, defying the limits of my ability did not.

I confess, dear reader! That my June 30th deadline, so optimistically stated on May 7th, has proved a miscalculation of the most magnificent proportions. Allow me, then, to offer up a more realistic timeline: I don't expect to finish recording The Monk before the end of 2011.

Recording a novel is hard work. (... I hereby nominate this statement for 2011's Most Obvious and Understated Fact of the Year award.) I finished recording and editing the first half of chapter one a few days ago and have since sunk into a state of shivering, hopeless despair. This state, terrifying as it is, has yet proved to be a recovery of sorts. For instance, I can now speak without feeling as though my mouth is stuffed with cotton.

And however much I love voice acting, I am still learning the rudiments of the craft - thus, this novel-long project will take much longer than I initially anticipated. I will see this project through. (I can't exactly leave chapter one unfinished, now can I? I've just reached the part where I get to sing! Or at least recite the satirical verses of the fortuneteller.) But the deadline is now a work in progress, TBA. I apologize for any expectations I might have raised with my misleading ambitions. I need to take this novel more slowly.

But on a lighter note, I now realize how much fun it is to record shorter works! This isn't too much of a non sequitur - I have a recording of a flash fiction I wrote this summer in the pipeline. Stay tuned.