Voice Recording

I really don’t like listening back to the sound of my own voice. I have ideas of where that came from but nothing concrete enough to relegate here. To be honest, this seems like a common enough thing that it might just “be a thing”, that is, without a reason at all. But at the same time, I do like the act of recording myself?

Let me elaborate. Sometimes when I’m trying to outline something but I need to drive somewhere, I’ll open up a microphone app on my phone, toss it in the passenger’s seat, and head out, talking into my phone all the while. At the end, though, I just delete the recording. So really, it’s a useless gesture. But I can’t bring myself to talk in the same way without having it.

There are enough depictions of writers talking into recorders that I assume that part of the process is true to real life. But I’d liken what I do more to what programmers term “rubber ducking.” It’s a similar principle: you explain the problem with your code to a rubber duck, with the hope that the mere act of saying the problem out loud lets inspiration strike.

I frequently don’t remember all of what I say in these “rubber duck” car rides. More often than not, they’re 15-ish minutes of dead air and the occasional rambling punctuated by the sound of a turn signal. But the few moments of brilliance I do have, I think I hold on to pretty well. Whether that’s a single sentence or the skeleton of a plot point, that’s something I take and write down later, recording or no.

-F