It happens every few months: a voice acting student I know is morphing before my eyes into a working voice actor, having been at it for six, nine, or twelve months. They come to me all excited. “I booked my first gig!” (Usually when I hear about that it also includes, “my first audiobook!”)
Oh, great, I say. Are you ready technically? Got your studio together, have your process in place?
I’m greeted then with either a blank look or a confident-sounding, “Oh, I’m setting up my studio this week.”
My reaction (that I keep to myself) is, “How did you do a decent audition without a place set up to record? And why would you accept a job without a place to record it?” [Read more…] about Jacked Up: Carts and Horses
When you make your living talking, you’re bound to run into words you’ve never seen before. And then there are those words you just learned how to say, not realizing that most people don’t even say it the way you do. 
N-D-who? Non Disclosure Agreements were in the news a year ago with the stories about the fall of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
So there you are, struggling to figure out a place to record, a place to set up your first studio! 
Free tips.
A voiceover career is primarily a creative enterprise. You get to walk into a small room, talk to a microphone like it’s your best friend, record that sound, maybe edit it (and other audio engineering tasks), become a master of your computer, the internet and social media, market yourself online and at conferences, have a “so what do you do?” elevator speech…all sorts of cool stuff, right?
One of the things about VO is that nobody’s experience (AKA “the journey”) is quite the same as anybody else’s. Two people can sign up at the same pay-to-play site, for example, put up essentially similar demos, and do everything like each other, and one will succeed and the other won’t book anything.
A question came up in a recent audiobook class about pseudonyms, and whether you need them in other areas of voiceover. 
When my two sons were in high school, I had a rule: Tell me where you’re going and when you’ll be back. Call me BEFORE you’re late.
