Hello friends,

Is it just me, or have the last couple of months been really tough? Between the endless icy slush of a New England winter, a depressed freelance economy and the general panic that comes with living in the year 2025, it’s all just been a LOT.

Life just feels…messy.

But I am a glass half full, silver lining, look on the bright side type of person. And so, I’ve made a list of all of the (audio) things that improve when you learn to embrace the mess.

Making Big Improvements

Okay, so you know how it feels when you’re cleaning out your bedroom closet and suddenly you realize that your clothes are strewn across the entire room?

Things get WAY worse before they get better.

That’s how it should feel when you’re editing your writing.

I’ve worked with a lot of writers who try to address notes by making an endless series of tiny changes.

Instead of just writing a new sentence, they try to cram missing facts and clarifying phrases into the sentences they’ve already written.

And can I be honest with you?

It sounds like crap.

It's better to just start over and ask yourself, “What would this sentence sound like if I had included the correct information the first time?” “How can I express this idea in a way that's less confusing?”

The same thing happens when you’re looking at the structure of an entire episode. Or a serialized podcast.

Let’s go back to that closet analogy. The quickest way to organize an overstuffed closet is to pull everything out and throw it on the floor. Or the bed.

Look at the items one by one and decide if they stay or if they go. And if they’re staying, figure out where they belong.

Do these sweaters get hung on hangers? Folded on a shelf? Put in storage containers on the floor until I need them again?

Do I organize my clothes by color? Or type? Or season?

All of these options are valid. But it’s really hard to decide which is best when you’re staring at a jumbled mess.

So go ahead – make a bigger mess! You’re gonna have it all cleaned up before you know it!

Connecting to Other Humans

Especially in the age of Descript, people are editing the life out of their podcasts.

Seriously. Ya’ll gotta stop doing this.

Guests often use filler words like, “like,” “um,” and “right” to take up space while they gather their thoughts. Or they’ll respond to every question with, “That’s a good question!”

Every. Single. One.

But sometimes a “like” can be emphatic. An “um” can hold emotion. And a “right” can make the listener feel like they’re part of the conversation.

And sometimes – not very often, but sometimes – the host really has asked a good question!

When you take all of the filler words out of your interview, you can make it sound dull and lifeless. Robotic. Artificial.

The same thing can happen if you record too many re-tracks.

I recently consulted on a podcast that had exactly this problem. They brought me in to voice coach the hosts, to teach them to sound more natural while re-recording questions.

We worked on that, and I'd like to say that we made some pretty big strides.

But that was only half the job. Because when I listened to this podcast, I realized that the producers were asking the hosts to re-record wayyyyy too many interview questions.

Often the producer would be trying to fix a very minor problem. The host had made a little flub. Or the question had been slightly longer than it needed to be. Or the transition wasn’t quite right.

But it is incredibly hard to record a good re-track. I know hosts who have been in the business for decades who still don’t sound entirely natural.

There’s just an energy – an electricity – that runs through a conversation. Each conversation is slightly different. And matching that energy after the fact is next to impossible.

So yes, work on getting better at recording re-tracks. But also…don’t stress over every little thing. Settle for that slight flub. Or the question that’s just a beat too long. Or the transition that’s not quite right.

After all…to err is human.

Or something like that.

Finding Your Voice

This might come as a shock to you, but I am really good at grammar. I know the rules, and I am fully capable of following them.

But I don’t.

On purpose.

I use an absurd number of sentence fragments. And ellipses. And em dashes. And parentheticals.

(See what I did there?)

My goal is to write the way I talk. And when I write for other people – as producers often do – I try to write the way THEY talk.

I break the rules of grammar, not because I don’t know or understand those rules. But because good grammar can get in the way of a good sentence. And when I write, I want you to hear MY voice in your head.

And yeah, sometimes that means I get myself in trouble.

On a recent project, I worked with a fact checker whose background is in writing. Now, fact checkers aren’t usually responsible for catching grammatical errors. They’re supposed to find factual errors. But this particular fact checker was a also writer, and grammatical errors offended her writerly sensibilities.

And there was one grammatical error that I made – over and over again – that really bothered her.

There’s no real need to get into the specifics of this error. The fact checker was right. I was wrong.

But it was one of those grammar rules that just SOUNDS wrong when you get it right. People from all over the world make this mistake many times a day, and it’s gotten to the point where if you actually say it the right way, your sentence is gonna flag as wrong to many people’s ears.

Most of us don’t use perfect grammar in our everyday speech. And that’s okay. Language evolves. And you don’t have to be the lone grammar policeperson holding the line.

Unless you’re naturally a “hold the line” kind of person. In which case, you do you, babe. I do not judge.

But for me…I’m gonna keep my ellipses.

And sentence fragments.

(And parentheticals.)

And even though I've seen a lot of chatter about how the em dash is a "red flag" for AI detectors – I am not deterred.

You will pry the em dash from my cold, dead fingers.

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Karen