Readings

For an hour and a half today no one was home but my dog and I, so I decided to practice my readings. By readings I don't mean the actual act of reading, I mean reading my work out loud. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be. Not only did I have problems properly speaking (I have trouble with the alliteration, and "s" and "th" sounds), but my throat got so sore over time that I couldn't continue my practice. Halls didn't really help either. Reading out loud helps with writing so much, because what works and what doesn't work with flow shows quite well. I particularly had problems with "tapped the touch pad". I also had issues with the word "horror", which is innocent enough on paper, but when I read it out loud it sounds like "whore"...and unfortunately the two are much too interchangeable in a sentence (one doesn't mean the other, I just mean that the sentence doesn't sound...weird with either word). I found that my voice got annoying after awhile as well. I'm sure most people find recordings of their own voice annoying, but I have an almost childish voice and I find that the tones and pitches fluctuate a lot (not as in puberty fluctuate...I mean just parts of words and sentences that start with one tone end with another tone). At any rate, I can certainly see why my Fiction Writing prof said that there can be good writing that is terrible for readings, just because of the sounds put together. One of my readings ended up fairly decent, but I got messed up at the "horror" part and started to laugh.

Also...pro tip. If you're going to do a reading, or record yourself reading, EDIT before you start. I ran into a few typos, and it threw me off so much I had to restart.

Once I get a decent reading out, I will post it here, either through YouTube or upload it directly.