The experience of narrating one's own book is a mystery, both to the author and readers. You have no idea what goes on in the recording studio.
Authors reading their own works is the exception, not the rule. To write about that experience is even rarer.
And now, Greta Christina has written on her blog a candid account of the experience of reading her own new collection of erotica, Bending.
According to Greta, it’s a little like a peep show, a little like a marathon.
First things first, Greta answers the question on everyone’s mind; do you get turned on while reading your own porn?
“Here’s the thing. Reading my own porn out loud is an undeniably erotic experience. My dirty stories almost always get their original inspiration from my masturbatory sex fantasies...
“I was working hard to immerse myself in the stories, to really experience them, to get deep inside my characters and feel what they were feeling… so I could get it across to my listeners.”
She writes extensively about the balance of getting inside her own stories, while maintaining a professional distance. Of being turned on, while your only listener is exclusively listening to the quality of the audio.
“The physical setting played into this oddity as well, this bizarre juxtaposition of erotic intensity and professional detachment. A voice recording booth is small. It’s dark. It’s intimate. It’s private, carefully designed to be sealed off from the outside world...It’s just you, in a small, dark, private room, with the filthy images you spent years honing as vividly as you could... In some ways, it reminded me of the “talk to a live nude girl” booth where I worked at the Lusty Lady peep show.
“At the same time, it’s an entirely professional setting: all techy and sh*t...And the relationship with the recording engineer was 100% professional… necessary, desirable, but in its own way, weird. I’ve never before read my dirty stories to someone who showed so little outward interest in their content. (To this day, I wonder what he thought about the stories. Especially the more seriously f*cked-up ones. And especially the one about the unicorn and the rainbow.)”
And physically demanding? You bet it is! Reading for hours on end, you take in way less oxygen than usual,
“It felt like an erotic marathon… but it also felt like the regular kind of marathon.”
Was all this effort worth it? I’d say so. Head on over to Greta Christina’s Blog for the full account.
PS
Another tip of new audio narrators: Shar Rednour wrote a detailed and fresh guide (just like her book!) for first timers about the finer points of recording and performing your own work. Highly recommended!
