FINDING MY VOICE - A JOURNEY INTO PAGES AND AUDIO
I'm still discovering my voice as a writer, an artist, a photographer, filmmaker, in short, as a storyteller.
Nothing I'm doing is saving lives or changing the world, but hopefully it brings a few gasps, a few laughs, a couple tears, and maybe a bit of inspiration to a few.
Like tens of millions of people, I grew up enthralled with books and stories. From science fiction to myths and legends and then history and biographies, and then finding my way back to the heroes of adventure and thrillers. I could draw, and later paint, and later still, transitioned into photography, screenwriting, acting, editing, and directing films.
It was only then, and now, after writing thirty feature screenplays over almost as many years, some lost, some sitting on literal and digital shelves, a few turned into films, that I have come back to the idea of writing stories as complete books.
I don't think I'm clever enough to write short stories and so I am into my third novel. Just over a hundred 4 and 5-star reviews on Amazon, but I've found some love on Goodreads, BookBub, and more, with a couple thousand positive ratings and so am encouraged to continue, and am now working on my version of a super hero, not a kids story! SUPER NINJA. More about the title some time soon...
My first self-published novel was LOOP, a science fiction horror novel that I have hopes of turning into a movie. My second is BLACK FIRE, an action thriller that takes my hero across the globe to save the daughter of a fallen comrade.
Both started as screenplays, and when a film I was to direct in Cameroon fell apart during the pandemic, I buckled down to expand them into full blown novels.
I'll talk more about that process and the inherent differences between screenplays and novel forms of the same story.
And so... finding my voice... literally. Both in words on the page and in recording audio.
So much more to share, hopefully to accomplish several things.
One is to document for myself the journey. As artists, I think many of us struggle with thinking our efforts have any value at all. Maybe some self-love gives them value, but I still hope to go further. As a martial arts teacher, I spent years traveling the world learning and teaching others, mostly in hope of guiding people into the discovery of their own journeys.
I miss it. Martial arts brought me many friends, led me to all facets of filmmaking, and took me around the world. I try to bring some of that into my stories and writing, but selfishly, I understand that teaching and sharing is when I learn the most.
As an actor and teacher, I've spent a lot of time investigating, learning, and discovering my literal voice, the instrument with which I speak. Still so much to learn!
During my hold during the pandemic, sheltering with family, I began investigating the idea of recording my voice in hopes of releasing an audio version of my stories. Like most of us, I didn't and don't have an ideal space to record.
Still, with piled up mattresses and pillows, blankets and acoustic baffles in the earliest, quietest hours of morning, I did my first attempts with the most primitive tools. Then came research on current microphones that I might be able to afford and interfaces and recording programs.
One of my first problems was like a lot of people, I hated my voice, or rather, wasn't confident in it. So began new research and practice on how to actually speak.
I am writing this in part to hold myself accountable. Like the stories and writing journey itself, to put myself on the line and, good or bad, to complete my first audio book.
Lots of directions and I don't promise to stay on any one likely path. Recording and audio principals haven't really changed that much since their beginning, but ideas of how to use the new technologies may take me down some interesting roads.
This is my beginning, and a challenge to myself to put up and shut up. I may fail in the next week or two, decide its too much work or the failure is too much embarrassment, but I've never given up on anything I 've ever started, though realistically, I maybe should have, but I'm inviting you along for the ride in hopes it entertains and inspires, or at the worst, gives me another way to find my voice and tell a story.
LOOP and BLACK FIRE and some fun reviews can be found on AMAZON under my name William Kely McClung
LOOP https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09TJH24KB
BLACK FIRE https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSSD7CVL
Nothing I'm doing is saving lives or changing the world, but hopefully it brings a few gasps, a few laughs, a couple tears, and maybe a bit of inspiration to a few.
Like tens of millions of people, I grew up enthralled with books and stories. From science fiction to myths and legends and then history and biographies, and then finding my way back to the heroes of adventure and thrillers. I could draw, and later paint, and later still, transitioned into photography, screenwriting, acting, editing, and directing films.
It was only then, and now, after writing thirty feature screenplays over almost as many years, some lost, some sitting on literal and digital shelves, a few turned into films, that I have come back to the idea of writing stories as complete books.
I don't think I'm clever enough to write short stories and so I am into my third novel. Just over a hundred 4 and 5-star reviews on Amazon, but I've found some love on Goodreads, BookBub, and more, with a couple thousand positive ratings and so am encouraged to continue, and am now working on my version of a super hero, not a kids story! SUPER NINJA. More about the title some time soon...
My first self-published novel was LOOP, a science fiction horror novel that I have hopes of turning into a movie. My second is BLACK FIRE, an action thriller that takes my hero across the globe to save the daughter of a fallen comrade.
Both started as screenplays, and when a film I was to direct in Cameroon fell apart during the pandemic, I buckled down to expand them into full blown novels.
I'll talk more about that process and the inherent differences between screenplays and novel forms of the same story.
And so... finding my voice... literally. Both in words on the page and in recording audio.
So much more to share, hopefully to accomplish several things.
One is to document for myself the journey. As artists, I think many of us struggle with thinking our efforts have any value at all. Maybe some self-love gives them value, but I still hope to go further. As a martial arts teacher, I spent years traveling the world learning and teaching others, mostly in hope of guiding people into the discovery of their own journeys.
I miss it. Martial arts brought me many friends, led me to all facets of filmmaking, and took me around the world. I try to bring some of that into my stories and writing, but selfishly, I understand that teaching and sharing is when I learn the most.
As an actor and teacher, I've spent a lot of time investigating, learning, and discovering my literal voice, the instrument with which I speak. Still so much to learn!
During my hold during the pandemic, sheltering with family, I began investigating the idea of recording my voice in hopes of releasing an audio version of my stories. Like most of us, I didn't and don't have an ideal space to record.
Still, with piled up mattresses and pillows, blankets and acoustic baffles in the earliest, quietest hours of morning, I did my first attempts with the most primitive tools. Then came research on current microphones that I might be able to afford and interfaces and recording programs.
One of my first problems was like a lot of people, I hated my voice, or rather, wasn't confident in it. So began new research and practice on how to actually speak.
I am writing this in part to hold myself accountable. Like the stories and writing journey itself, to put myself on the line and, good or bad, to complete my first audio book.
Lots of directions and I don't promise to stay on any one likely path. Recording and audio principals haven't really changed that much since their beginning, but ideas of how to use the new technologies may take me down some interesting roads.
This is my beginning, and a challenge to myself to put up and shut up. I may fail in the next week or two, decide its too much work or the failure is too much embarrassment, but I've never given up on anything I 've ever started, though realistically, I maybe should have, but I'm inviting you along for the ride in hopes it entertains and inspires, or at the worst, gives me another way to find my voice and tell a story.
LOOP and BLACK FIRE and some fun reviews can be found on AMAZON under my name William Kely McClung
LOOP https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09TJH24KB
BLACK FIRE https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSSD7CVL
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Fuczm
Flotsam, Jetsam, Fuczm... the crap in my head...
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