I spent another 4 hours locked in the box last night, recording Shades of Milk and Honey. When I came out of the booth, my voice was morphing between my natural voice and my British narrator voice. It was very odd.
Even odder, and frankly disconcerting is that, as I am writing this, my voice in my head is stuck in British mode. I haven’t spoken yet today and wonder what will come out of my mouth. Curious.
I’ve not had this experience before but then, I’ve never spent this long speaking with another voice before either. This is not to say that I don’t still need a dialect coach in the room, but by the end of the evening Roz was needing to stop me less. The bath-trap split still gives me trouble occasionally, but is starting to become a bit more instinctive.
Overall, this is going slower than previous books largely due to dialect corrections. I am hopeful that as I settle into the voice the pace will pick up.
Good heavens. I think even my syntax in writing is shifting. Odd.
I should probably go write some witty banter in a detective novel while I’m stuck like this.
One of the other odd things about recording one’s own work is that I can’t blame my stumbles on anyone other than me. Why are some of these sentences so long? Did I really have to choose words that I have never said aloud? Why are there so many characters in some of these scenes? I dread the straw-berrying picking party already… Ten characters? Really? What was I thinking?
Edited to add: I just greeted Rob and sound mostly normal, although perhaps my voice is placed slightly farther to the front of my mouth. Slight vowel shifts but overall, I still sound American.
You should only worry when you start seeing words like “colour”, “mediaeval” & “theatre” show up in your blog posts and tweets.
I already tend to throw the “u” back into words.
I say that if you’re going for witty dialogue, perhaps expounding on that one project you did where you sent texts to all of us would be fun!
And Mike from New Hampshire…I am an American who puts the u in colour. I blame Canadian university. 😛
I had a chemistry professor that was British. Whenever I review the notes, the voice in my head would be in British accent.