It was 5 years ago today — 18 March 2021 — that I first heard about the situation that inspired my forthcoming book.

By the end of that year, I hadn’t done much on the project even though I kept thinking about it. I’d found 2 books and originally planned to mash them up in a new book like I did with Nellie Bly’s and Elizabeth Bisland’s books about their competing and very exciting solo trips around the world in 1889, creating Bly vs. Bisland: Beating Phileas Fogg in a Race Around The World.

However, 6 months later, I wrote in my journal on 22 June 2022: It’s been on my to-do list with no movement forward.

Fast-forward another 1.5 years to 5 December 2023. By this time, I had discovered a third book on my subject, which made my idea to combine texts more complicated. While this project was never far from mind, I still hadn’t taken much ACTION on it.

And then, I attended Jennifer Jill Araya’s workshop Dream Big: Year-End Goal-Setting for Creative Entrepreneurs.

I’m a planner by nature. I know and have written about goal-setting. I understand and have also written about the importance of writing your goals. I definitely get stuff done!

Yet I hadn’t taken the first steps of figuring out and writing a goal for this project until that afternoon with Jennifer. Writing a thought or a wish turns it into a goal.

Jennifer walked us through the framework for setting SMART goals.

As shown on Jennifer’s slide, SMART goals are:

• S — Specific
• M — Measurable & Meaningful
• A — Attainable & Assignable
• R — Relevant
• T — Time-Bound

I wrote my goal for the first time that day. I excitedly shared it in the Zoom chat:

In my Evernote notes for the workshop, I wrote “first quarter 2024” as my timeline for completion. I had no idea that I would feel called to do original research and how that would change the scope and deadline MANY times!

I wrote in my journal on 2/24/24:

It took me almost 3 years from the idea to get fully immersed in this story. Maybe the Universe had to align things for me to meet someone who gave me invaluable advice about structuring my story.

The project scope and my self-imposed deadline have changed several times, but my commitment to the work has only grown stronger. I craft my book every day!

Drew told me something that has become my guiding principle:

Write the book that YOU want to write.
Don’t worry about any deadline that you have set.

Longtime readers (and those who clicked some of the previous links!) know that one of my favorite books is Write It Down, Make It Happen: Knowing What You Want and Getting It.  Author Henriette Anne Klauser offers a number of creative ways to write down things, from filling in blanks in theme books to writing letters.

She assures us that any kind of paper or writing instrument will do. Her only rule is to date whatever you write down.

i’m not sure whether typing your thoughts on your computer screen has the same effect as putting your hand to paper. While we write using our keyboards and screens all the time, we have a greater personal connection when we physically write something on paper.

I actually had explored writing this kind of book about 30 years ago, but I ruled it out for a number of reasons. I didn’t realize that my old dream was now being fulfilled for me until recently when I transcribed my journal from 30 August 2000. This example further convinces me some ideas take time.

Acquiring my dream harp was the same way. I wrote at least 20 years ago — maybe longer — that I’d love to have a Lyon and Healy Style 11 because it has irises on the column and soundboard. I didn’t see it as a true possibility for me, though, and I even forgot I wrote it down. I certainly hadn’t had this model at the forefront of my mind when the opportunity suddenly arose in 2023 for me to buy this harp!

I encourage you to listen to those little glimmers of ideas, write them down, and see how great your life becomes as a result. The Universe will conspire on your behalf in its own good time and way to help you make them happen!

Screen shots from Jennifer Jill Araya’s slides used with her kind permission

The post Write It Down. Make It Happen! appeared first on Karen Commins.

Inspired by this article about how John Steinbeck used his diary while writing The Grapes of Wrath, I’ve been documenting my progress in researching and writing my non-fiction book in my daily journals. My journals are much more interesting as a result!

I then photograph my journal entries related to my book and use Evernote to transcribe them. Longtime readers know I’m an Evernote evangelist and use it for everything. I love it even more since Evernote actually transcribes my handwriting!

Authors who write in longhand could use this technique to quickly generate editable text rather than having someone laboriously type it.

I store these transcriptions in the Evernote notebook I created to house my book’s 1900+ (and counting!) research notes.

I tag the journal entries to be able to easily find them later. Once I launch the web site for the book, I’ll re-purpose all my journal entries into a new blog devoted to the book! The blog will certainly improve my SEO ranking for my book’s topic.

Since I was already doing that, I thought, “Why not transcribe the entire journal entry?”

On 12/14/25, I finally embarked on my long-held dream of digitizing my handwritten journals! I started keeping a regular journal on 8/28/99 and now am writing in book #86.

Over the years, Drew and I have looked for the best method to accomplish this task:

• I ruled out using my flatbed scanner because it takes too long to actually scan, plus you have to sit there with it and turn pages.
• I want to keep my journals intact, so that eliminated my super speedy Epson ES-500W from contention. I often use that scanner to create PDFs of Public Domain texts after Drew disassembles the book from the spine. I outlined my steps to perform OCR and otherwise optimize the scanned PDF in step 3 of Planning Your Trip to Public Domain World.
• Reviews of hand scanners made them seem unreliable and persnickety to use.
• The CamScanner app could do the scanning, but it doesn’t recognize handwriting.
• We bought a CZUR book scanner when they first came out. It also seemed to take too long to scan and was cumbersome to use, so we sold it. The newer CZUR ET24 Pro machine is far superior to the one we sold, but their app doesn’t recognize handwriting.

Since Evernote recognizes handwriting, I’m excited to use it to digitize my journals.

Here’s the process I use to transcribe my handwritten text:

1. Write in my journal as usual.
2. Take a picture with my phone’s camera of each page in the entry.
3. Crop the saved photo(s).
4. Share it to my computer. I AirDrop the photo between my iPhone and iMac.
5. Open desktop Evernote. (It’s usually already running.) Evernote will transcribe images on the phone, too, but I found it to be very frustrating because it would eat up time and memory.
6. Create a new note in the journal notebook.
7. Drag the journal picture(s) into my Evernote note.
8. Hover the mouse over the top right corner of the picture until the Transcribe button appears, and click it. Refer to the picture below.
9. Proof Evernote’s transcription for accuracy.
10. Create links to other entries, research, etc. that I mentioned in the journal.

It’s important to check the transcription carefully against the source text. The transcription process makes mistakes, including but not limited to these errors:

• For my handwritten text, Evernote’s transcription frequently uses wrong numbers, whether I’ve written a time, date, or a word count.
• It leaves out commas where I had them — almost always ignoring the Oxford comma and commas between independent clauses — and adds them where I don’t want them.
• It adds ‘s for plural words, which, as a grammarian, annoys me considerably!
• It removes the NOT part of contractions, completely changing the meaning. For example, wouldn’t becomes would.
• Even with typeset text from newspapers, magazines, and books, sometimes Evernote:
  • paraphrases content
  • removes, adds, or changes words
  • makes up whole sentences entirely.

I’ve used this process in transcribing my research finds. The transcription errors become worse as an article’s length grows. I’ve learned to break up long columns of text when I’m transcribing newspaper articles.

So far, I’ve transcribed 148 pages of my current journal and am up to date with it. I started transcribing Journal #1 from 1999 and have completed a number of its entries.

With over 26 years’ worth of words to transcribe, this project will definitely take a while! I keep this quote from Leo Tolstoy in mind:

A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his ultimate goal
and say to himself every morning:
“Today I’m going to cover 25 miles and then rest up and sleep.”

PS. If you’re interested in developing a journaling practice, I’ve previously written how I use my journal and things I’ve learned about adding entries to my journals. I shared some entries with their take-aways in my This Date in My History series of articles.

Important note about your data privacy when using Evernote’s transcription tool

Evernote’s AI Transcribe FAQ states:

For audio, transcription processing occurs within Evernote. For audio summarization and image and video transcription, some data may be shared and processed by a third-party AI vendor.

Such content is only processed to complete your summarization or transcription request. Your data is not used to train AI models. Files are processed securely and deleted by third-party processors within 30 days. If you need more info, you can always review our Supplemental Terms, our Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy.

Whether you’re using the audio transcription tool, the video transcription tool, or you’re converting your screenshots to text, you can trust that your content stays private and secure.

The post Digitizing My Journals With Evernote appeared first on Karen Commins.

In these times of an increasing proliferation of AI slop, the advice is even more relevant to authors today. I resurrected the piece and its links from the Wayback Machine on Archive.org from this page.

As an audiobook narrator, I encourage every author to get her work into audio. However, regardless of whether you ever want to create audiobooks of your titles, these four tips from other authors about planning your audiobook will make you a better writer.

1. Listen to audiobooks.

This first piece of advice surprises many writers. They may have studied the words of other authors, but they’ve never thought much about how the words actually sound.

Jason M. Hough, New York Times bestselling author of The Darwin Elevator, wrote a terrific blog post that outlines five reasons why writers should listen to audiobooks.

Laura Hillenbrand, the New York Times bestselling author of Seabiscuit: An American Legend and Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, has listened to hundreds of audiobooks. According to her interview in the New York Times Magazine, Hillenbrand said her immersion in audiobooks has actually improved her writing because she hears the musicality of the language.

Stephen King thought about the sound of the words even back in 2007. In a column for Entertainment Weekly, King noted, “Audio is merciless. It exposes every bad sentence, half-baked metaphor, and lousy word choice…the spoken word is the acid test. They don’t call it storytelling for nothing.”

2. Read your work aloud.

To elaborate on King’s point about the spoken word highlighting every error, you could read Chapter 11 from the book Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing, written by University of Massachusetts – Amherst English Professor Peter Elbow.

Jeanette Smith’s editorial in the Guardian Liberty Voice summarizes that chapter, which asserts, “reading aloud is the easiest, most efficient way to revise any written report.”

And as every audiobook narrator knows, when you speak every single word in the text, you will discover:

• grammatical mistakes like subject/verb disagreement
• plot/logic issues
• repetitive words, phrases and sections of text
• typos, including character name changes
• homonyms which are used as part of a visual joke on paper but lose their cleverness when spoken
• sentences full of alliteration that, like homonyms, may look great on paper but are not easy to say, particularly if performed in a character’s accent
• any words or phrases that are difficult or awkward to voice (Audiobook narrators universally would like to remove the words “clasped,” “gasped,” and “grasped” from the dictionary. Say each one followed by the word “the,” and you’ll understand our reasoning.)

In a New York Times editorial titled “Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud,” Verlyn Klinkenborg further observed that reading aloud helps you understand the meaning of words and their intention.

3. Limit the number of characters in a scene.

This suggestion is one of 10 tips to improve the audiobook experience offered from New York Times and USA Today bestseller Wendy Lindstrom. Not surprisingly, Lindstrom is another author who advises you to read your work aloud.

4. Consider writing strictly for audio.

The explosion in the audiobook market has given rise to a renewed interest in audio dramas. I’m not talking about soap opera-ish, radio plays from the ‘30s or the one performed by Frasier Crane and friends. No, today’s audio dramas are performed by a full cast and have lush music and effects, like on a movie soundtrack.

International bestselling author Jeffery Deaver discussed in this piece how he adjusted his writing style and overcame technical writing problems while creating The Starling Project as an original audio drama for Audible.com. Deaver had to find new ways to present details that are normally explained by a third-person omniscient narrator. A sound clip of the production is included with the article and demonstrates the power of this medium.

By applying these tips and planning how your words will sound to a listener, you will tighten and polish your written words into a beautiful string of the finest pearls!

PS. I’ve read stories from authors who narrated their audiobook. Frequently, they changed words and even rewrote sentences during the recording sessions. They hadn’t considered how the words would sound, or they didn’t realize a sentence was problematic to say.

Except in the case of Public Domain texts, only the author has the liberty and luxury of re-writing any part of the book.

As a narrator, I have to read the words that are in front of me and do so much more to fully realize the author’s intent!

Photo: Storyblocks

The post 4 Ways Planning Your Audiobook Can Make You a Better Writer appeared first on Karen Commins.

I’ll share more as I continue with this project.

Behind the Scenes

I first wrote a bulleted list of the pieces of info I wanted to include in the video. I wrote the script and then recorded and edited it in my studio.

As is the case whenever I make a video, I always create my audio first and then match the visual components to it.

I either created the video clips by recording the screen with Camtasia or downloaded them from Storyblocks.com, where I have a subscription.

Their image search is very frustrating and frequently doesn’t reveal useful graphics, so I was pleasantly surprised with the video search. I quickly found usable clips that matched very well with my voiceover.

For instance:

• I said ‘But wait! If I’m going to write a new book, why not add my own research and conclusions to it, especially since I LOVE this kind of research?!’
  • During the first part, I showed a lightbulb that is outlined in blue neon, and the filament spells IDEA.
  • In the second part, I play a video of vivid hearts.
• Near the end, I say, “I still have much research and writing to do.”
  • I love the construction sign clip that flashes up the words “Work Zone!” I think it gives a nod to my site with my vacation postcard logo and my NarratorsRoadmap.com.

During a tour of the New York Public Library, we learned that the lion statues out front are named Patience and Fortitude, with Fortitude being the one closest to 42nd Street. I stood by the one named Patience because Drew and I agree that I could use more patience in my life!

We bought DJI Mic 3 wireless microphones for our live video shoots in New York. In past years, I had tried several lavalier mics and had not been satisfied with the sound quality from them. Drew researched wireless mics and discovered that podcasters use this DJI mic. It interfaces with a phone, making it an easy and portable choice.

At the end of the video, you’ll hear an F-major harp glissando, which I played on my Lyon & Healy Style 11 harp. I set my B and E pedals to sharp, which is the lowest pedal position. Instead of 7 tones in the scale, you only hear 5 of them: F, G, A, C, and D. It feels and sounds like magic to me!

Transcript with Video Description

[March 2021 calendar]
One day during the pandemic lockdown, Drew and I were watching a

[woman lecturing in sculpture gallery of a museum]museum’s
lecture over Zoom. The host mentioned a person and event that were on the periphery of the subject.

[handwritten Curiosity!]
I perked up with curiosity!

[Google what happened to]
I Googled the person to learn more. I thought the story would make a great book,

[Google is there a book about]
so I looked for one in the public domain that I could narrate, produce, and publish as an audiobook.

[pages turning in a book]
I found a book on my topic.

[woman’s hands thumbing over tops of a number of books]
Then I found another one. I discovered some other related titles and decided I could edit parts of them together and create a new book.

[blue neon lightbulb created in outline with the filament spelling IDEA]
But wait! If I’m going to write a new book, why not add my own research and conclusions to it,

[vivid multicolor hearts]
especially since I LOVE this kind of research?!

[Online Course in neon]
I went through a Research Methods for Writers course offered by my library.

[pan up from bottom to top of a stack of newspapers]
I’ve pored over 1000s of newspaper articles and

[Ancestry.com search for Immigration and Travel]
scoured Ancestry.com for factual evidence like passenger lists on ships.

[live shoot outside the New York Public Library, main 5th Avenue branch]
And now I’m here in New York at the world famous New York Public Library, ready to do more research on this exciting book project!

[live shoot outside New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on Amsterdam Avenue]
And today my research is taking me to the New Public Library for the Performing Arts, which is near Lincoln Center. I hadn’t actually been to this part of New York before, so that makes this research trip even more exciting.

[live shoot outside Columbia University, New York]
My research scavenger hunt in New York has now taken me to Columbia University. I’m so excited to be here, and I can’t wait to see what I’m going to find!

[white and orange construction barrier with words Work Zone]
I still have so much research and writing to do, and I look forward to sharing my first book with the world as soon as possible!

[Coming Soon in red neon on black background, with a single letter revealed at a time]
It’s even more exciting to me because it’s going to be a full cast audiobook, and I’m even planning the website.

[my postcard logo]
I’m Karen Commins, and I hope you’re living the life of your dreams! (harp glass)

The post I’m Writing a Book! appeared first on Karen Commins.

Rather than making New Year’s resolutions that were quickly abandoned, I’ve absorbed and applied a few guiding principles and actions over many years. Changing my thoughts and words have made a dramatic positive difference in my overall happiness and throughout my life.

Guiding Principles

1) Joel Osteen always says, “We can’t expect victory and talk defeat.”

2) Wayne Dyer always said, “We can’t get enough of what we don’t want.”

3) These 2 sentences are openings to the broad topic of mindset. Manifesting anything we want in our lives starts with our thoughts. Saying and writing our thoughts sends them out into the universe and gives them creative energy. Therefore, it’s vital that we are ever vigilant to think, speak, and write our words in the direction we want our lives to go!

Also remember: However we fill in the sentence “I AM ___” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy!

4) In 2016, I saw a video of Mike Dooley, who writes the notes from The Universe. He compared the manifestation process to a GPS system. You have to enter your destination (a BIG goal) and then put your car in gear. Don’t worry if you’re going the wrong way because you’ll get guidance! He said:

Guidance will be forthcoming.
You’re going to quickly hear — perhaps over Barry Manilow – “Make a legal U-turn!”
And you’re going to hear that until you get on track.

Dooley said to adopt a mantra like “Every day, I’m getting closer.” He said you can get excited about the details, but don’t make them the end result.

It can be so difficult to stay unattached to a particular outcome and let the Universe fulfill your desire in its own way and in its own time. If you’re interested, I offered examples and many resources about affirmations, visualizations, and outcomes in Narrator’s Cup of Joe — Woo Woo Blend.

5) Wayne Dyer always said, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

6) What you put out in the world comes back to you and in a time and way you didn’t expect. If I kept saying to the Universe with great angst thoughts and words like “Why not me? What’s wrong with me?”, that’s going to keep showing up for me. It’s an endless loop. You’ve got to throw a wedge in there to change that loop because it’s a perpetual, negative cycle. It’s a terrible act of self negation, because then you start thinking things like:

• Obviously, people don’t like my voice.
• People just don’t like me.
• They don’t think I’m a good person.
• They think I’m not reputable.

These thoughts have no basis in reality! However, concentrated focus on and repetition of them make them part of your identity! As Wayne Dyer, Mike Dooley, and other spiritual teachers/leaders have said:

What you think about expands. Like a cold, the more you talk about something and more emotional weight you give it, the more it becomes part of you.

Actions I’ve Taken to Develop and Maintain a Positive Mindset

1) During Kristine Oller’s Jan. 2018 webinar about mindset, I asked her how to break my habitual thinking of comparing myself negatively to others. She said:

• old ways of thinking were prompting my compulsion to check social media and make comparisons
• look at the story you’re telling yourself and then collect proof that the OPPOSITE of that story is true — find five pieces of evidence to “force your mind to become creative and flexible.”

I realized that I was using those posts to gather evidence in the old “not good enough” story! I would see something on Facebook which the inner enemy would seize upon and start re-counting for me the auditions I had not won, awards I had not earned, money I had not made, publishers I had not worked for, etc.

I wrote down 8 ways that my story is different and sooo much better than the one the enemy was using! Take THAT, inner enemy!

2) Celebrate my own accomplishments, not just on social media but in a real way.

3) When my brain wants to seize on something and get in a downward spiral over it, I repeat out loud this quote from Paulo Coelho: “Stop being who you were and change into who you are.”

4) Tell myself in the mirror each day all the positive “I AM” statements that I can dream up. Write them down and then think about them and repeat them out loud through the day. Louise Hay’s book MIRROR WORK is an excellent guide for this type of mental reprogramming.

5) Write a compassionate letter to myself and re-read it out loud as needed. I am a much harsher critic of myself than I ever would be to anyone else! My letter is full of encouragement and praise that I wrote as if I were writing it to another person. It helps to re-read it when that “little girl inside” thinks things are unfair. This idea is an exercise in the book SELF-COMPASSION: THE PROVEN POWER OF BEING KIND TO YOURSELF by Kristin Neff.

6) Change the second thought to one that makes me feel better.

It’s very low and very disempowering when I’ve felt hurt, disappointed, frustrated, and angry because I feel like I’m being rejected by the world and/or people don’t like what I have to offer. We cannot help that first thought. It comes barreling in, unbidden, and we’re not in control of that.

We are in control of the very next thought! We are in control of our choice of what are we going to do with that thought we just had. I choose to think in the next thought of things I wrote in my compassionate letter. It’s a perfect antidote because what we see on the outside is a physical manifestation of what’s going on inside.

The It Works! booklet by R. H. Jarrett is a good primer for changing your thinking to create the life of your dreams. I especially recommend you read Brad Jensen’s review even if you don’t get the booklet.

Wishing you radiant health, unbounded prosperity, and every happiness in 2026 and beyond!

The post Change Starts With Your Thoughts and Words appeared first on Karen Commins.

My daughter asked, “Do you ever have any regrets, Mom?” And while I know she was asking this question on a philosophical level, my mind immediately went to this puffin sweater I saw in Iceland. It’s been 3 years since I saw it in a shop there, & I still regret not buying it.

Her comment struck a chord with the Twitterverse. Her post received hundreds of replies about similar missed shopping opportunities and garnered thousands of likes.

I have my own story about the same sort of regret, along with some ideas about living with no regrets.

On Saturday 5 March 1994, we were in Munich, Germany. I wrote in my journal:

I actually saw a poster advertising Barry’s European tour and his date in Munich. I looked around to see if I could find one pasted on a wall that I could steal! (Don’t judge me!) The one I saw was in a store window. Since the tour is postponed indefinitely, I may try to go back to the store (if I can remember where it is!) and try to buy that poster.

Alas, it was not meant to be. After touring Neuschwanstein Castle the next day, I wrote:

Once we got back to Munich, we walked up the Marienplatz trying to find the Barry tour poster. Either my memory is failing, or I just saw an overwhelming amount of stuff yesterday. In any case, we couldn’t find it again (sob).

I always regretted that I didn’t go in that music store and try to buy that poster when I was standing there! I looked for the poster for years to no avail.

On 15 February, I decided I’d finally put this remorse out of my life. Somebody in Germany had an eBay listing for the Hamburg poster in that long-canceled 1994 tour. Since I never found the one for Munich, I thought Hamburg would be close enough. I bought that poster!

In the glorious perfection of the Universe, 3 days shy of the 30th anniversary of my original sighting in Munich, the poster arrived at my house! It was in almost mint condition, as if it had been waiting for me for 3 decades.

I had it framed, and I can say without any bias that it looks spectacular! I hung it in my craft room with my other framed Manilow art. To be clear, when I say “I hung it”, I mean “Drew did the work while I watched!” We had to re-arrange that whole wall and move one of my other pieces to accommodate this new addition.

5 Ways to Live With No Regrets

I’m not sure it’s actually possible for me to be completely free of regrets. However, I’ve found these rules help me minimize and eliminate them:

1. When shopping, the time to buy it is when you see it.

One of the respondents to Celia’s tweet included a picture of a store interior in which the owner displayed a sign that read “Nothing haunts us like the things we didn’t buy.” Given the overwhelming responses to her tweet, I think it’s true!

2. The corollary to the first rule is “If I have it, I’ll find a place for it.”

Almost always, the thing in question would be an impulsive purchase. I used to talk myself out of buying things because I didn’t know where I’ll put it. Repeating this tenet out loud helps me know whether the item truly has lasting appeal and needs to be in my life or would be quickly forgotten if I walked away from it.

3. To quote my favorite line from Gone With the Wind: “Askin’ ain’t gettin'”, to which I always add: “If you don’t ask, you don’t get!”

You’ll never know what will happen unless you ask for what you want. You might be turned down. You might be ignored. But what if you get the answer that changes everything?!

This principle is very important in the Law of Attraction. You have to be very clear about what you WANT and ask the Universe for it or something better. 

Sometimes it’s hard to have the courage to ask, which leads to the next guideline.

4. Feel the fear, and do it anyway.

Susan Jeffers wrote an excellent book with that title that I found to be helpful when I read it years ago.

Resistance shows up in many ways, with the leading method being some type of fear. I don’t necessarily mean some big fear like the loss of a home or relationship. I’m talking about little — and possibly also irrational — fears, like worrying what someone will think about me or being afraid to audition for an audiobook because I might feel overwhelmed with the workload if I were cast for it.

I have to push all those types of thoughts aside and just DO whatever is in front of me.

5. Be kind and compassionate to myself and remind myself that I’m doing the best I can each day.

This rule is the most important and the most difficult to implement. I’m not always successful at it.

It’s all too easy to fall in the trap of “could have/should have”, which can lead to a downward spiral of negative thinking. Continuing to blame or criticize myself for my (in)action in some past situation doesn’t change the situation or help me feel better about the outcome. It only keeps me stuck and not living my best life in the present moment.

Do you have a shopping sorrow or a way to combat regrets? I hope you’ll share it in the comments!

The post Living with No Regrets appeared first on Karen Commins.

Update 4 added 10/7/23:

Earlier this week, Findaway finally removed the Machine Language clause from the Distribution Agreement.

As I wrote in 2021, taking steps to remove the human voice and replace it with a synthesized one destroys the art form.

I certainly do not want or intend to participate in any attempt to create artificial voices meant to replace human narrators.

However, I unknowingly may have done that very thing by choosing to distribute audiobooks through FindawayVoices.com. Today, I took action to revoke Findaway’s license to Apple to use my audiobooks for machine learning.

In recent days, people on Facebook have shared this clause in Schedule D of the rights holder’s Distribution Agreement from FindawayVoices.com:

Machine Learning
Rights Holder grants Apple a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable right and license to use Digital Audio Products files for machine learning training and models, provided that in no event shall any Rights Holder Digital Audio Products or portion thereof be provided to any third party or end-user in contravention of this Digital Distribution Agreement (e.g. making Rights Holder content available for free to end-users without express written consent). Rights Holder may revoke this right and license by sending Notice to Findaway as outlined in Section 11.

Section 11 states:

11. NOTICES
All notices required under this Agreement shall be sent by email to support@findawayvoices.com.

I’m a rights holder on Findaway. I sent the email below to FindawayVoices as my Notice. Feel free to use it as a template, though in retrospect, I’d change the subject to be Revoke license for Apple machine learning. I also should have added that my revocation applies to any future similar license with another company. Not surprisingly, the auto-reply message stated they are “experiencing higher than average email volume.”

Subject: Revoke use of Apple machine learning

Hello. I am disgusted to learn that Findaway at some point added language to Schedule D of the Distribution Agreement which allows Apple to use my audio for machine learning.

Per Item 11 of the Agreement, I revoke that right and license forever for all of my audiobooks.

Please send confirmation of this request, as well as confirmation from Apple that my files will not be used in this manner.

Looking at my copies of past Distribution Agreements, I see that this clause has been in place since at least March 2020.

It’s unfortunate that Findaway’s lawyers banked on the fact that most people would not see or understand this treacherous clause in the Agreement.

For a company that proudly proclaims “We Love Narrators” on the home page of FindawayVoices.com, this clause makes it seem that the company loves big money more.

In addition to the royalty break-down listed in the Agreement, Findaway should be transparent about the amount of money that Apple is paying for the right to use your clients’ audio to create synthetic voices that could take the jobs of the narrators Findaway “loves”.

Thank you for your attention and immediate action.

Update 1:

After receiving numerous questions and comments from other narrators, I’ve edited this post to clarify that the “Machine Learning” language only appears in the rights holder’s Distribution Agreement.

I’ve narrated and self-produced a number of books that I distributed through Findaway as the rights holder. I couldn’t find a link to the current Distribution Agreement on the web. It’s contained in my Rights Holder Dashboard.

Narrators sign away our interest in the recording at the point we contracted with a rights holder. You should ensure that your contract specifically states that your voice may not be used without your permission for machine learning or any other purpose not explicitly stated in the contract.

You can send the email to Findaway. However, I imagine they would tell you to contact the rights holder(s) of books you’ve narrated to revoke their sub-license to Apple.

I would argue that the RH doesn’t have the right to sub-license MY VOICE to Apple or anyone for machine learning or anything else. Unfortunately, this particular horse at Findaway has been out of the barn for a while.

Update 2: 

The Findaway Voices Distribution Agreement doesn’t reference other Findaway/Spotify divisions. In fact, Spotify is only mentioned one time — in the table showing the royalty rates from each site.

FindawayVoices updates this Agreement when they add or drop distribution channels/partners, so I hadn’t been looking closely at each change. I don’t remember seeing emails from Findaway that itemized each difference. I seem to recall being forced to re-sign the Distribution Agreement before I could see my FV Dashboard.

Schedule D “Digital Audio Product Program Policies” talks about the types of programs they accept and starts with these 2 paragraphs:

Rights Holder acknowledges and agrees to adhere to Digital Audio Product Program Policies. Findaway may change the Digital Audio Product Program Policies at its discretion from time to time with notice to the Rights Holder.

Our content policies play an important role in ensuring a positive experience for both our users and publishing partners. Please join us in this effort by respecting these guidelines. We may make exceptions to these policies based on artistic, educational, historical, documentary, or scientific considerations, or where there are other substantial benefits to the public.

The paragraph about the sub-license to Apple for Machine Learning was strangely added at the end of Schedule D, right after paragraphs about prohibitions on Hate Speech and permissible and non-permissible Sexually Explicit content.

Actually, from a lawyer’s perspective, that’s probably a perfect hiding spot.

Update 3 added 9/26/23:

I wrote in a comment below on 2/13/23

As a result of the publicity over the clause in the Findaway Distribution Agreement, reps from SAG/AFTRA met with Findaway and Apple. Both companies agreed to halt the use of any and all files for machine learning, retroactive to the beginning of the practice.

In this 2/14/23 WIRED story, Jane Love, SAG/AFTRA’s national director for audiobooks, “confirmed that Apple’s access to files from Findaway had been halted.”

The post Revoked Findaway’s License to Apple for Machine Learning appeared first on Karen Commins.

I’ve recently enjoyed participating in several Clubhouse chats. In fact, I held an Ask Me Anything on the site on 9/16/22 to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of NarratorsRoadmap.com.

If you click the link above, you’ll see it goes to an Evernote page that has the Clubhouse graphic and audio recording of the chat, as well as an AI-generated transcript from Sonix.ai. (Please see the additional comments about the transcript in the notes below.)

When creating an open Clubhouse room, you can choose to turn on Replays. The Replay is created automatically once you open the room and will be available on Clubhouse until you delete it. Replays let your audience hear the discussion at a later time, share the link to the chat on and off Clubhouse, skip to the next speaker, and make 30-second clips.

Just as — perhaps even more — importantly, Replays can be re-purposed in other ways, such as in part or whole on other social media sites. You know I LOVE to re-purpose content! For instance, I could transcribe one or more recordings and copy my words to a blog article. I’ve also extracted clips to make audiograms to promote the replay in between live events. I’m thrilled to announce that my Clubhouse shows are available on NarratorsRoadmap.com with AI-generated transcripts and on podcast platforms like Apple and Amazon/Audible!

I found that downloading the Replay wasn’t as straightforward a process as I would like. After another narrator who ran a Clubhouse room was unable to download the audio, I decided to create this 4:49 video to show the steps.

Notes:

1) Only THE ROOM CREATOR and/or THE PERSON WHO STARTS THE ROOM may download the recording. This article states that only the creator can do it. I’ve found if I start the room that another person created, I can download the replay.

1A) Clubhouse made changes in how you find the house and its replays, but the download sequence works the same way I showed in the video.

2) I have an iPhone. The screens and steps on an Android phone might be somewhat different.

3) If you have an iPhone and an Apple computer, you can use AirDrop to “magically” copy the file from your phone, assuming you have the right version and are within Bluetooth and Wi-Fi range. It’s even faster and easier than the email solution that I showed, but I said email is easiest because everyone can do it. You’ll find Airdrop instructions here.

4) My video beta tester said the last page they Googled appeared at 3:01 in the video, where the NarratorsRoadmap.com page is shown in my background. As I wrote in a screen annotation at 2:51, you’re in Safari at this point. Therefore, the last site you visited will appear on your screen.

5) My video beta tester also reported that the download arrow discussed at 3:05 in the video appeared at the bottom of the screen rather than the top. Apple moved the Safari URL tab bar to the bottom of the screen when they released iOS 15. You can move it back to the top of the screen to match my orientation by using these instructions.

6) For some reason I haven’t discovered, the Replay is an MP4 file, which is a video format. I used Camtasia to convert it to an MP3 file. Pro Tools also would convert it, but it was taking too much time.

7) If you want to transcribe your replay, here’s my affiliate link to Sonix.ai as we both get free minutes if you sign up for the service. I use Sonix a lot to transcribe podcasts and YouTube videos where I want the info but don’t have time to listen and take notes. Sonix doesn’t write the words with 100% accuracy, but the 80% or more (usually 90-95%) that it gets right is enough for me to understand the gist of what was said. If parts of the transcription don’t make sense, the audio is cued with the text, so it’s easy to hear a certain segment. Sonix also doesn’t necessarily include the proper punctuation on the transcript.

8) I’ve started a Clubhouse House named Narrators Roadmap and invite you to join! You don’t need to be a member of the NarratorsRoadmap.com site. This House is open to everyone! Every other Wednesday, I host the Pit Stop room — your fortnightly mid-week rest area to refuel your drive! I talk with audiobook narrators who have at least 1 other profession. They’ll inspire us to use all of our talents and gifts! You can hear previous shows and/or read their transcripts on the Pit Stop page.

When Clubhouse rolled out its 2.0 platform in September, it made all Houses into private spaces. People can attend new rooms only by invitation. Replays made after the update are only available to House members and will have a little lock icon on them to indicate that status.

The post How to Download Clubhouse Replays appeared first on Karen Commins.

I’ll answer her question, but, more importantly, I also want to address the erroneous statement that the narrator is “just reading the book out loud.”

What’s Typical

Narrators following industry best practices read the entire book before recording the first word of it. We make extensive notes about characters and pronunciations.

This article and this one discuss my preparation and audiobook prep in general, respectively. I don’t mark pauses or emphasis, preferring to make those choices organically while performing the text.

During my prep of fiction books, I look for clues about the characters or people in the book, including:

• their age
• their socioeconomic standing
• their native region and/or specified accent
• their physical traits and attributes

With this info, I can develop a convincing voice for each character based on the author’s clues and present the characters as real people in real circumstances, not a caricature in a cartoon. If the character has an accent, I may need to learn it.

In non-fiction books, I research the author and the content of the book so that I understand the subject and message to be conveyed. I’m standing in for the author when recording the book, and I want to speak with her passion and authority.

In either case, I’ve done copious research on correct pronunciations. Anyone who has ever heard a GPS mispronounce the name of their town will be annoyed to hear mispronounciations in an audiobook. Mispronunciations take the listener out of the story.

I don’t know the type of material the publisher requested from this author. The goal of the publisher and narrator is always to realize the author’s vision of the book, so it’s perfectly reasonable to ask the author to supply additional info to aid in achieving that goal.

I am confident that no one is asking the author to do extra work. Instead, the publisher and narrator are trying to understand her preferences so they can interpret and deliver them in the audiobook performance.

For instance, authors of fiction books are commonly called on to submit character lists. While the narrator does take notes during the pre-read, we may miss details. We’d love to see the author’s description of each character to include any personality quirks and back story affecting the character’s POV.

It’s also very helpful to hear from the author about things that ARE NOT in the book, like:

• whether the book is part of a series with recurring characters
• whom the author would cast in each role if they were producing the movie version
• if any pronunciations are made up, not easily researched (such as names of private citizens), or are preferred when multiple ways exist to say something

Authors of non-fiction books could be asked to write clarifying transitions or descriptions of material shown in charts and images. Many publishers create PDFs to accompany the audiobook, but the narrator still needs to say something about diagrams as she comes upon them in the text.

The author’s chance at direction occurs during this preliminary stage. Once the narrator starts recording and passes any initial checkpoint, such as the first 15 minutes on ACX or Findaway, she usually doesn’t accept artistic or directorial changes.

Not Just “Reading”

An increasing number of authors and publishers hold the misguided view that the narrator is “just reading out loud.”

An audiobook is a performance art based on the narrator’s interpretation of the author’s words. We do MUCH MORE than just read!

People buy audiobooks because they want to be entertained, informed, and inspired. Consequently, most narrators have acting experience and obtain ongoing performance coaching to create highly-nuanced narrations.

Although it seems like we’re only reading aloud, narrating an audiobook is an extremely challenging and demanding performance medium!

It requires intense concentration. We must be in the moment for every word of the book and respond to the demands of the text. Fiction books require us to perform all the parts like a 1-person play. Non-fiction books dictate that we find ways to keep the read lively and engaging so that we aren’t speaking a monotone core dump of flat information.

Audiobooks are also an incredibly intimate medium. People are listening with earbuds. The breath or silence between words can convey depth of meaning.

As I wrote in this article, here are 9 things professional narrators naturally do:

1. Understand the subtext and add the appropriate emotion, inflection, and tone for each word without speaking in aural pattern like a newscaster or a children’s sing-songy rhyme.
2. Be like Goldilocks when setting a reading pace. The tempo can’t be too fast or too slow; it needs to be right for the material.
3. Read all of the words on the page in the order they are written, without adding, subtracting, or transposing any of them and still tell the story in a convincing way while maintaining the right accent, character voice, and/or tone. Whew! Even writing that list was tiring!
4. Develop believable character voices and maintain consistency of those voices through multiple recording sessions spread across a number of days. All voices and tone should sound the same throughout the entire book so that it sounds like it was recorded in a single session.
5. Record in an ultra quiet environment free from extraneous noises like children, pets, appliances, aircraft, and lawn tools. The microphone hears all of those sounds. If they make it into the final recording, listeners are annoyed by the poor production quality. You even need to wear quiet clothes!
6. Minimize lip smacks, tongue and teeth clicks, breathing noises, and stomach rumbles while still sounding natural.
7. Re-record any sentences that have mistakes. If I make a mistake in words, inflection, or character’s voice, we stop the recording, and I say the sentence again. If I decide I want to play a different emotion, we stop the recording, and I say the sentence again. This process occurs constantly during the original recording sessions.
8. Finish the recording sessions in the time allotted, which can be an aggressive schedule. The industry rule of thumb is that it takes 6 hours in real time to produce 1 finished hour of audio. A 10-hour audiobook therefore may require 60 or more hours to record, edit, proof, correct, and master the audio files.
9. Ensure that any corrected recordings will have the same sound, character voice, and energy as the original recording. I play back my original recording so that I can reproduce it when recording the correction. The new audio is seamlessly inserted into the original. The whole book should sound as though I read it in one sitting.

While some narrators pay hourly rates for studio rental and an engineer, many professional narrators create audiobooks in our own studios. Doing so means that we overcame a minimum of 4 additional technical challenges:

1. Established a dead quiet space for recording.
2. Purchased and learned how to use an appropriate microphone, hardware interface to the computer, and computer. A telephone headset microphone is suitable for telephone audio, not an audiobook.
3. Selected recording software and survived the steep learning curve in understanding how to use it to record and save audio files.
4. Studied the techniques of editing and mastering the recordings to eliminate mistakes and make the audio sound pleasing to the ear, or hired a freelance editor to perform these tasks.

Say No to Artificial Intelligence

Admittedly, many of the activities above associated with the recording process extend the time needed to record, edit, and proof the audiobook to make it both a faithful rendition of the author’s words and its own art form. More time equals greater expense, so many small publishers and authors are considering using artificial voices to reduce expenses.

As a professional audiobook narrator, I’d like to offer some important points that authors should consider before embracing a synthesized voice to record your books.

One’s voice conveys the essence of being HUMAN. Nothing expresses our thoughts, feelings, and emotions better than the human voice.

Calling Alexa and Siri “artificial intelligence” is really a misnomer. These devices and apps may sound sort of like humans, but they truly “just read.” They are not capable of thought and do not have life experiences that will shape and color a performance.

Devices do not take breaths. Without breath, you have no life. In fact, listeners have said they grow uncomfortable if they cannot hear the voice taking a breath.

These 2 simple but profound differences prevent artificial voices from being a suitable choice for any long-form narration, but especially not for an audiobook that is competing with other forms of entertainment for consumer dollars.

Technology is ideal when robots replace humans in soul-sucking jobs like installing computer chips on a circuit board. It will never replace a human’s ability to convey emotion.

Authors carefully choose every word they write. Audiobook narrators work to understand each word and make organic acting choices that convey the author’s intent. We can change our rhythm, volume, pitch, intonation, tempo, and pauses. We give fictional characters a unique inner life and instill vibrancy into non-fiction texts.

In contrast, an AI voice can’t imbue any word with meaning. It can’t detect the SUBTEXT in a single sentence, much less over the trajectory of an entire book. Experienced narrators actively mine the subtext for clues and create a more expressive, layered performance based on it.

Words on a page can fall flat and be interpreted in different ways. A narrator can say the same sentence in a number of ways to impart different meanings. For example, the listener can actually HEAR THE DIFFERENCE when I smile! How would an artificial voice understand the underlying humor in the text and say the words so that the joke lands? It can’t.

When an author considers everything she’d lose by choosing an AI voice over a human voice merely to save a little time and money in audiobook production, I’d hope she’d realize that the true value in an audiobook is in the human narrator’s ability to TELL THE STORY and take the listener on the journey with us.

The post Much More Than “Just Reading” appeared first on Karen Commins.

I signed up for his Magical Mystery Manifesting Adventure, which began today. Each day in the 21 days, he and co-presenter Pam Grout will send an email with a secret mission of something to manifest.

When I read today’s assignment of a feather, I thought of a peacock feather. If you read my last blog post or saw this tweet or this Facebook post of a my picture of a real peacock, you might think I have a fondness for peacocks! I thought a feather would be unusual to find.

Drew and I were on our way to pick up something we had ordered. It was Friday lunchtime traffic on a major road that is always congested.

I saw we were about to drive by a flea market I like but haven’t shopped in for a year or more. It’s one of those places that used to be a grocery store but is now filled with several hundred vendors who sell everything from baseball cards to crystal chandeliers. Some of the booths contain so much merchandise that you can’t see everything and have difficulty even walking in. I fear one wrong move will send some precarious piece crashing to the floor.

I said I’d like to stop there. His first inclination was that it was too difficult to turn left out of its parking lot to get to the store. I said I had no business at the flea market and wasn’t looking for anything in particular. We should go on to our destination.

As we turned on the street by the flea market, I commented that we could’ve turned right out of the parking lot and gone only a little bit out of the way to the store. He offered to turn around, but I stubbornly said to keep going where we were headed.

He said again he could turn around because he knew I’d want to go to the flea market.

Reader, that wonderful man I married DID turn around, drove back to the flea market, and parked in front of the door.

I usually like to walk up and down every aisle, taking a quick look left and right to see everything crammed in all the stalls. I skipped a couple of aisles to avoid other shoppers and thought about leaving and returning some weekday when fewer people would be there.

I had not told Drew about the feather assignment.

We’d been through about 80% of the flea market when there, right at the aisle, was not 1 peacock feather, or 2….but about a dozen of them!

I then let Drew know the goal of today’s mission. He pointed out some MORE peacock feathers in 2 other places in that booth! I not only got my peacock feather, but in the abundance of the Universe, I was able to pick the one that seemed the most vivid!

The critical voice inside is saying, “The chances of finding feathers, even peacock feathers, at a flea market are pretty good.”

That’s true. Beyond my peacock feather, I saw 5 feathered boas in different colors and all manner of bird pictures and figurines.

If I only manifested the peacock feather, I probably wouldn’t have posted this story.

We walked up the next aisle, and I saw it — the antique golden oak wall telephone I have wanted for decades!! Of course, I’ve seen them many times and could have bought one long before now.

Today, I said to myself, “What are you waiting for? BUY IT!” I’m so excited to FINALLY fulfill this long-held dream!

But there was one more very unexpected thing that came home with us from the flea market.

Hanging on the back wall, almost hidden behind a display cabinet and flower arrangements on the table, was an old, cast-iron sign that’s about 2/3 the size of a license plate and about 25 times heavier. It reads:

SOUTHERN RAILWAY

QUIET PLEASE

AVOID ANNOYANCE TO RESIDENTS

KEEP YOUR ENGINE QUIET AND

TAKE CARE TO AVOID SMOKE

AND STEAM

It caught my attention and made me laugh as we walked by it. That’s good advice for all of us! I decided I needed this sign hanging outside my recording studio next to my Hush sculpture. It will make me smile every time I walk in there!

After today’s marvelous manifesting success, I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens in the remaining 20 days in the course!

Oh, and we did turn right out of the parking lot and got to the store in about the same amount of time as our original route would have required!

By the way, what do you think Drew found on our patio this afternoon?

A FEATHER!

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