I’ve been radio silent for a few months, which means I’ve missed wishing you good tidings over a few major holidays, so I’m hoping this post title covers all the bases.
My lack of updates has not been a reflection of having nothing to share. On the contrary, I have quite a bit to update y’all on. It’s been more a combination of busy-ness paired with a flare-up of those pesky perfectionist tendencies that cause me to talk myself out of doing things unless they hit some ridiculous standard. #thestruggleisreal
Of course, once I talked myself down from that craziness and was ready to give an update, it felt like it had been so long that I couldn’t just write any post, but it had to be a super-duper-mind-blowing-fantastic post. I ultimately realized that whole basket of nonsense was just perfectionism having made a costume change. #slydevil
Anyhoo, I finally decided to just rip the band-aid off and create a blog post regardless of how earth-shatteringly-impressive it may or may not be. If I’ve learned anything in this process, it’s the value of sharing the steps along the way rather than only giving the highlight reel.
Nothing against a compilation of mountain-top moments, but it’s important to be discerning about how you share those. It can definitely contribute to the false message of “overnight success” or possibly discouraging to those in the early part of working toward a goal because it neglects the reality of the daily grind and the unsexy days of just showing up and doing the thing.
That’s not to say I don’t have some exciting things to share, because quite a bit has happened in the 2-months since we’ve chatted. However, I’ll spread it out over a few posts, cuz I don’t wanna wear out my welcome and as they say, “always leave ‘em wanting more.”
I continue to learn about the VO industry and find new paths to expand opportunities for voice-over work. For example, while I have been working hard to establish direct relationships with publishers, I’ve also learned there are entire companies whose business model is to have a roster of narrators that they work with exclusively. They are not the publisher or the talent, instead, they project manage the audiobook acting as a go-between for publishers and narrators.
These companies are quite selective and make sure their narrators are vetted so that they produce high-quality audiobooks and narrated media. I am pleased to share that I was invited to join the roster of BeeAudio. (and yes, I LOVE their logo and the fact that when you work with them as a narrator/editor/proofer you are considered part of the “hive”)
If you are interested, you can check out their site and you’ll see my bio and samples under the “Meet Our Narrators.” I’m already in process with my first project with them, a 3-book series, so while my goal was to get 2 new projects before the end of the year with publishers, between this project and the Blackstone project, I’m gonna consider it a win.
The other update I want to share is that I now have an agent! I’m going to put this victory under the category of the importance of relationships. Call it your tribe, posse, network, whateves, the fact is we need other people if we are trying to build something.
Sometimes it’s as support, someone to listen as you share how you are doing, other times it’s people who can share their experience or knowledge on a topic or industry. Regardless, if you want to get to a new place, you are gonna need other people along the way. For those die-hards out there who think otherwise, I’d like to add that sharing the journey with others is also waaay more fun. #oneisthelonliestnumber
Shout out to my friend Rachael who encouraged me to reach out to some agents and kindly put in a good word where she could and ba-blam, I’m now getting auditions for commercial voice-over work. #attitudeofgratitude
Obviously, I’m learning along the way, and I expect there will be lots of interesting tidbits to share in the process. However, none of this would be happening if I hadn’t taken the steps to put myself out there.
Yup, it can be scary and unknown and there’s a billion reasons to not take a single step, but if there is something that you want, a goal you want to reach, place you want to go, job you want to get; you are the one that has to put the wheels in motion. And remember, while you can always change direction along the way, you can’t steer a parked car.
I have 2 things that I want to share regarding the lettering work I’ve been doing. The first is that in December I did my first large-format lettering piece in the form of our holiday card.
For those who have known me for a while, you are probably familiar with the tradition my family has of creating elaborate Christmas cards. Initially it came out of wanting a more creative outlet that my current design projects were lacking.
However, once the girls were old enough to get the gist of what was happening, it became a full-on family tradition and now I would be vehemently outvoted if I tried to stop it.
The process of coming up with an idea isn’t really defined, but I do like it when the idea reflects things that are happening in our lives at the time because it creates a kind of marker as we look back year to year. Here’s a compilation of previous years:
As you can see, I had already incorporated lettering in previous years, so it seemed like a good time to take it up a notch and try a different way of creating with lettering.
So chalk drawing on our garage door, with us sitting in front of it one cold winter morning became the idea. Here’s the final piece:
I do have a bunch of photos and videos that I took along the way to document this process; however, I’m not sure if that’s something that you would be interested in. The truth is it takes a long time to edit and pull all of that together, which I’m totally fine with doing if you would like to see it. But if you are all, “nope I’m good” then I’ll just let it be.
Here’s what I’m offering; if I hear back from 5 or more people that you would like a behind-the-scenes look at “Christmas Card 2019” then I’ll put that together in my next post. And if it’s all crickets after this post, I’ll take the hint and move on.
The second Visual Update is that I’ve created new artwork for my Reel World Valentines, artwork inspired by favorite romantic movie lines, but with a dose of reality. #keepitreal
I started this series last year and created 6 unique lettering pieces all based on lines from movies, but tweaked just a bit to make it relatable. I then took those and made a free printable download. Each artwork has it’s own page to print, cut, fold and voila you’ve got a sweet little card to give to your boo.
This year Dean & I sat down and came up with 2 new ideas that I created artwork for and added to the download to make a series of 8 individual cards. Here’s the artwork in it’s original format:
Anyone interested in getting the goods, head on over here to get your FREE copy of Reel World Valentines and please share the link with anyone you know who resonates with the idea that life isn’t a romantic comedy.
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