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Karen@KarenCommins.com

Karen Commins

Award Winning

Atlanta Audiobook Share-rator™

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Archives for 2012

3 Thoughts to Help You Get Past That Mistake

24 October 2012

Every job promotion I earned through my long career at the IRS was a competitive action. Today’s story is about a job I didn’t get due to my own mistakes and how those mistakes help me in my voice-over career today.

Once upon a time…

I started working at the IRS as a teenager. Daddy worked there and encouraged me to apply for a part-time job on the evening shift after school. It was a data entry job in which your output was measured against that of your peers.

As a fast typist, the work was easy for me, plus I made more money and had a more structured schedule than my friends who worked in restaurants. I never thought my job there would evolve into a career, but I eagerly applied for every position that had potential for more money.

Given the procedures involved, the high number of applicants, and paper blizzard of job applications, jobs typically weren’t filled for 3-6 months after the announcement. I would apply for a job and then forget it (kind of like doing an audition today).

One evening, my manager called me to her desk and told me that I had a job interview. I think she ended this exciting news flash with something like, “Oh, and it’s 5 minutes from now, so you better start walking.”

I worked in a 1-story building spanning several acres. All of the tax returns for several states were processed in that building, so you can imagine its size. I didn’t know where the interview room was and, after several wrong turns on various hallways, practically had to run to get there.

Even though 3 decades have passed since that day, I still remember the interviewer’s face when she saw me.

There I was, fashionably dressed in my lovely tank top, overalls, colorful toe socks and flip flops, out of breath and probably a bit sweaty as I burst into the room.

She looked me up and down and most assuredly thought, “Um, no.”

She asked me a few questions, and my answers revealed my complete lack of knowledge about her organization. I didn’t even know which job I was being interviewed for! I’m sure she thought that if her other top candidates were as prepared as me, she’d prefer to leave the job vacant.

Someone else’s job “interview” story

I thought about this incident recently when I received an email from someone who bemoaned a mistake in an audition. That person kindly gave me permission to reprint their words here:

I am on ACX.  I made the mistake of submitting an audition from home with horrendous lack of quality and only put in the comment, “please let me know if there are issues.”  Ha . That must have been like comedy for them.  I did not get any comments.  So I have been making all the mistakes that teach me what to do next.  Still looking to figure out how I recover from such embarrassing mistakes.

Man smacks his head after making a mistake

 
I learned 3 things from my bad interview experience that may help you get past your own mistakes:

1.  You have to prepare for what you want.

Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” In my case, preparation would have included dressing the part and being familiar with the organizations where I had applied.

However, a big part of your preparation involves learning what NOT to do. Like showing up for job interview dressed like a hobo and submitting an audition with horrible sound quality, we all have to learn some things the hard way!

Being in a learning curve is a scary place to be. The best article I’ve written about being in a learning curve is 12 lessons from Dancing With The Stars. If you read that article and absorb the lessons, you’ll find it easier to give yourself permission to learn and grow from your experiences.

2.  You’ve got to bring your A game.

My friend Dave Courvoisier writes an excellent blog about voice-over, equipment, and social media topics. He recently wrote an (Embarrassingly) True Story and the subsequent Feedback Follow-up in which he described a producer’s reactions to 400 auditions for a pirate voice.

I encourage you to read these illuminating articles as they offer a producer’s exact comments about the auditions he heard. In short, he felt most people didn’t make an effort to impress him or do good work, with half sending “terrible recordings” and others sending “laid-back and lazy” auditions.

The good news is — to quote George Eliot and a title of one of my audiobooks — “It’s Never Too Late To Be What You Might Have Been”.

Every day is an opportunity to grow and improve. As you learn more and improve, your A game is going to change.

You may have lost one chance to make a good impression, but you haven’t lost ALL of them. You have to shake off the negative thoughts and hold the attitude every day that you are working to the best of your ability. Your actions will follow your thoughts, so you might as well think thoughts of progress and victory!

And remember, people on top of the mountain didn’t just fall there.

3. Things happen for a reason.

Sometimes you figure out the reason, and sometimes you never do because it wasn’t about you. If I could go back to that blown interview, I wouldn’t change a thing. I learned something valuable that day.

I can look back at the closed doors in my life and see how they led to something better. I’m reminded of another IRS interview story.

In 2008, I had an interview with the multilingual office. I really, REALLY wanted that job. It would have been a promotion, and the work was something I thought I’d be very interested in doing. For some reason unknown to me, they were delayed in making a decision after the interview.

Meanwhile, my best friend Mike asked me to work on a temporary promotion for 4 months in his office in Applications Development. When I said yes to that opportunity, my life changed in ways I couldn’t imagine:

  • I wasn’t selected for the job I thought I really wanted. It turns out I never missed it.
  • I loved working with Mike again! I was his assistant manager, and I felt pride in contributing in a meaningful way to the organization.
  • Although I had been desperate for years to get out of the IRS and into voice-over full-time, I actually ACCEPTED my life for the first time. Acceptance of your life is a key to moving forward.
  • My original manager in Network Operations was incredibly generous. Since I loved the job with Mike so much, she let me continue working in Mike’s office for a year after the temporary promotion ended.
  • Tax Exempt and Government Entities (TE/GE) is an IRS business unit that deals with taxes for those groups. TE/GE was one of our main clients in Applications Development, so I learned a lot about their organization.
  • In 2009, I had an interview for a project manager position in TE/GE Business Systems Planning. They didn’t select me for the job.
  • Instead, TE/GE actually offered a communications job to me! It was my dream position at the IRS!
  • In 2011, the IRS offered early retirements to a very small number of employees, mostly in areas of communications and training. Guess what? I was one of them! If I had stayed in Information Technology, whether with Mike in Applications Development or my original job in Network Operations, I would still be working at the IRS, with no end in sight.

My life would have turned out very differently if I had gotten that job as a teenager. I love my life and wouldn’t want to change it!

When you know that things happen for a reason, you place less emphasis on any one thing that happens. This knowledge takes the stress out of any perceived mistakes of the moment.

Don’t dwell on those “mistakes”! As I discovered through my many IRS interview experiences, what we think are mistakes are often the catalysts we need to take our lives higher.

Image: iStockPhoto/PeskyMonkey
 

Filed Under: Away From the Mic, Law of Attraction, Narrators, Observations, Voice-Over

Summer/Fall 2012 Audiobook Releases

16 October 2012

My audiobook work has continued steadily all year, and I’m blessed and grateful to report that more are coming!

In addition to the narration, I did the complete production of each of these books in my stunning soundproof studio. I am so fortunate that Drew directs me on my audiobooks. He is exceedingly good at catching mis-reads, and he also offers guidance about saying lines with different emotion or inflection.


Drop Dead Divas by Virginia Brown (Book 2 in the Dixie Divas mystery series)

No sooner has Bitty Hollandale been cleared of the murder of her ex-husband than townspeople suspect she may have killed his lover, town bad girl Naomi Spencer. In addition, Naomi’s fiancé Race Champion is also found dead. Talk about a fly in the martini!


Dixie Diva Blues by Virginia Brown (Book 3 in the Dixie Divas mystery series)

Trinket Truevine and her cousin Bitty Hollandale are once again up to their eyebrows in murder and mayhem. This time, the husband of one of the Divas has been arrested for murder. The Divas will stop at nothing to clear him…but what happens at a Divas meeting stays at a Divas meeting!


Irreparable Harm by Melissa F. Miller (Book 1 in the Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller series)

A smartphone app is capable of crashing a commercial jet. And it’s for sale to the highest bidder. A plane slams into the side of a mountain, killing everyone aboard. But, as attorney Sasha McCandless digs into the case, she learns the crash was no accident. She joins forces with federal air marshal Leo Connelly, and they race to prevent another crash.


Hound Dog Blues by Virginia Brown (Book 1 in the Blue Suede Memphis series)

With a heroine named Harley Davidson, you know this cozy mystery will be fun! Harley sets out to find out who dognapped family dog King (named after Elvis, of course) and quickly finds herself in the midst of a band of jewel thieves!

I’m also excited about it because my co-narrator who did all of the male parts is also the hero of my life story — Drew Commins! It was quite a challenge to record both of our parts and then edit it to make it sound seamless. We also gained greater appreciation for each others’ usual roles.


Inadvertent Disclosure by Melissa F. Miller (Book 2 in the Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller series)

In this book, tiny but fierce lawyer Sasha McCandless finds a town divided by the practice of hydrofracking. The town’s only judge is killed just as he is about to decide a major issue about the mineral leases. Sasha races to find the murderer and save the town before it’s too late.


Subsequent books in each of these 3 series are on tap for the coming months. I’m currently finishing Lowcountry Bribe by C. Hope Clark. This mystery thriller is set in South Carolina, and the protagonist works for the US Department of Agriculture. It should be released in early November.
 

Filed Under: Audiobooks, Narrators, New releases, Voice-Over

4 Ways to Find Happiness When You Hate Your Job

25 September 2012

Does this paragraph sound like you:

I’ve had tremendous anxiety and stress on my job for over a year. Actually, I’ve been stressed out for much longer. Lately, I feel like I’m “on the edge”; I’m about to go crazy.

Or what about these comments:

  • I worked 13 hours today….
  • I have been exhausted all day and found it very difficult to concentrate at work….
  • I felt frustrated, overwhelmed, and burned out a good bit of today….
  • Just thinking about work makes me feel sick to my stomach.

I know what it’s like to feel all of those things because I lifted these sentences from my first serious journal, which I kept between March 1993 and December 1994. (I say it’s a serious journal only to distinguish it from diaries with the little lock that I wrote in as a child. I wish I’d kept those and written journals throughout my life, but that’s another story.)

I started the journal after a meeting with a counselor from the Employee Assistance Program at my job with the IRS. I wrote:

I want to think about things that make me happy rather than dwell on those things that make me feel anxious, worried, depressed, etc. 

I told the counselor, “I think this job is killing me.”

The counselor replied, “If you think that, it probably really is.”

The counselor said my relationship with my job/employer is unhealthy and destructive since I have been suffering from headaches, digestive problems, and an inability to get to sleep at night.

The counselor’s immediate answer to my problem is to find another job. I think I’ll try harder to do that very thing.

If you see yourself in my mirror, there’s hope!

This way to happiness!

I think many people want to leave their current jobs and pursue a voice-over career because they perceive voice-over to be a fast and easy way to make money. I’ve already covered the fallacy in this thinking in many other articles.

However, I found 4 quick lessons in my 1993 journal that may help you find happiness when you hate your job:

4/21/93 — [A fellow computer network administrator] and I had a discussion while in Nashville that we have lost professionalism in the eyes of others. The proliferation of PCs has caused other people to think that our profession doesn’t require special skills. [My boss’s] refusal to fund my classes only emphasizes that point to me. 

LESSON 1: Most people immediately think they would be happy if they could change jobs or possibly even start a new career. Before you make an irrevocable and life-changing decision, read the article Every passion does not lead to a career choice. You need to figure out what is missing on your job and in your life, as well as ways to get it in your life.

If you do decide that a career change is necessary, accept that becoming a professional in ANY category requires time and money to gain the knowledge, skills, and experience necessary for that line of work. Malcolm Gladwell asserts in his book OUTLIERS that 10,000 hours – or approximately 5 years of 40-hour weeks – of dedicated practice is needed for anyone to reach the elite level of his or her field.

Of course, you can become an expert in your field with less than 10,000 hours of practice. I can’t say precisely how long it would take. I do know that success requires more effort than a weekend workshop.

Based on my experience in switching careers, I advise people to start their new career slowly and in a part-time capacity while still employed in the first career. It takes the pressure off you as you gain the skills to be successful in the new career. You can funnel money made in the first career into classes needed for the second. Through it all, you will feel happier knowing that you are taking active steps to live the life you envision.

***************

7/12/93 – I did my first training session as a reader for the GA Radio Reading Service. I auditioned several weeks ago. On 6/30, the Director of Volunteers told me I had passed the audition. She said only about 35% of the people pass the audition. Since it consisted of 100 difficult vocabulary words, 2 newspaper articles, and a dramatic piece, I can believe the majority of people wouldn’t pass. 

LESSON 2: Even voiceover — a career based on something as seemingly simple as talking — is not as easy as it looks! One way to gain valuable knowledge and experience is to volunteer for an organization.

My husband Drew is not the first person to parlay his volunteer gig into a paid position. You can read his inspiring story in the article 10 Law of Attraction principles in creating a job shift.

***************

7/30/93 – The best thing that happened all week was seeing Barry Manilow in concert tonight! He was on his “Greatest Hits…and More” tour. I had never seen him in concert…I was so excited at my first glimpse of Barry….The more Manilow I hear, the more Manilow I want to hear! 

LESSON 3: Your career is only one aspect of your life. Find a new hobby that brings you joy. That joy will overflow into every other aspect of your life, including the job. If it’s an expensive hobby (like traveling to see 51 Barry Manilow concerts in 20 cities!), you’ll feel greater appreciation and gratitude for the job that funds the hobby.

***************

8/11/93 – I went to the [literacy] tutor workshop last night. They are matching students and tutors starting today. I’m anxious to get started with it. 

LESSON 4: This lesson may seem like the same thing as #2, but it’s not. Item #2 was to volunteer for organization to gain experience you need. Item #4 is to take the focus off yourself and your problems, and instead, help someone else solve their problem.

I’ve read that one way to achieve your dreams is to help someone else achieve their dream. You can help someone by volunteering for an organization or just in a one-on-one capacity where you see a need. Helping someone else helps make the world a better place for all of us.

Your career is a series of decisions and an evolutionary process. Your job may add to your happiness, but it’s isn’t the source of your happiness. You can CHOOSE to be happy every day, even at a job that doesn’t fulfill you.

In an upcoming article, I’ll share some lessons I’ve learned about dealing with criticism. In the meantime, do you have tips about staying happy? I’d love to get your comments on the blog!

Filed Under: Away From the Mic, Narrators, Voice-Over Tagged With: Malcom Gladwell

Going Public for Audiobook Month and Some Pronunciation Info

29 June 2012

June is Audiobook Month, and this is Audiobook Week!

To celebrate, a number of audiobook narrators are posting short recordings today in the Going Public project.

This audio project is the brainchild of narrator Xe Sands. Each Friday, new audio is offered  for free download. Xe describes the project as pieces

recorded purely for the joy of reading something that truly resonates with the narrator and then sharing that joy with others. Pieces are offered gratis on a weekly basis, without compensation of any sort either to the narrator or author.

The project is also a brilliant way to further perfect and market our voices and our talents as audiobook narrators!

Today, I’m presenting the short story “Black Thursday”. Author Melissa F. Miller graciously gave me permission to record her award-winning short story, which is the prequel to the suspense/thriller audiobook IRREPARABLE HARM.

In this story, first-year legal associate Sasha McCandless learns that her blessings come at a cost.

When performing audiobooks, one large part of the narrator’s job is the preliminary preparation. You need to pre-read a fiction book to know how the story flows and find clues about each character that will help you make good choices about their voice.

You also need to look up pronunciations of words. Since this short story dealt with a law firm, I needed to find out how to pronounce some legal terms.

I usually start by Googling “word pronunciation”, for example, “qui tam pronunciation”. Usually, dictionaries pop up first in the results, and I may quickly find what I need.

In this example, I found an interesting document from the American Bar Association which explains that lawyers differ on the pronunciation of qui tam. This material was an exciting find since it allowed me to further develop the character in my mind and decide which way he would say the phrase based on the back story I imagined for him.

Narrators Judith West and Heather Henderson collected and created an exceptional resource of pronunciation dictionaries and research techniques that is a treasure trove for any audiobook narrator: AudioEloquence.com

If you have some free time, take a listen to the contributions in Going Public. Like researching pronunciations for your book, you’ll never know what you’ll find!

Photo:  iStockPhoto/ContentWorks
 

Filed Under: Audiobooks, Marketing, Narrators, Recordings, Short stories, Voice-Over

Power of “I AM” in Maintaining a Positive Attitude

23 June 2012

A positive attitude is one thing that people always advise you to have when starting or pursuing a voice-over career. You probably even think you have one. I thought I did….until I realized just how pervasive our negative thoughts and words really are.

For instance, in one of the on-line voice-over forums, we were discussing an audio recording technique. Someone made a comment like “I could kick myself that I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out for myself.”

We think and say things like that all of the time without ever realizing the negative energy lurking in our words.

That particular example is a double negation of self. First, the “kick myself” part could cause you to feel actual pain in your body. Your ears are listening to every word that comes out of your mouth. Your brain is processing those words and may interpret them as commands.

Some very common phrases that people use without thinking can cause mental or physical pain, especially when repeated and said with emotion:

  • Someone is a pain in the neck or butt.
  • I’d give my right arm for that.
  • That thing is to die for.
  • I am blown away by that.
  • That person is driving me crazy.
  • That situation is on my last nerve.
  • I love that person to death.

The “I wasn’t smart enough” part of the forum comment is the part I really want to discuss today. Saying “I wasn’t smart enough” re-inforces a negative belief system. If the person thinks they weren’t smart enough for one thing, maybe they start thinking they aren’t smart enough for other things as well.

When I’m around people who put forth such comments, I offer them a different perspective. I urge them to think and speak kindly of themselves. Rather than saying “I wasn’t not smart enough”, the person in the example could instead think something like “I had a good workflow but am happy to learn an easier way to do it.”

Vigilance is necessary when monitoring your thoughts. We can’t help that first, unbidden, unwelcome thought. Two steps are necessary to maintain a positive attitude after having it:
  1. Don’t say it! Saying the thought gives it a life out in the Universe. What you put out in the world comes back to you, probably in ways you didn’t expect.
  2. Think a different, BETTER-feeling thought as your next thought. This is your life, and your thoughts and words are your script. As Joel Osteen advises, don’t use your words to describe the situation. Use your words to change the situation.

Lately, I started to question whether I have lost my ambition or motivation. This negative thought only came to me when I looked at this blog and realized that I have not written a post of substance in 3 months.

It was bad enough to think it, let alone say it. Saying it gives it creative power!

When I heard myself say these things about myself, I felt bad. I felt discouraged. That’s what these insidious negative thoughts do — they make us feel bad and may paralyze us from reaching our destiny!

The bad thoughts and feelings multiplied even though all other evidence about my ambition and motivation told me both were in overflowing abundance:

  • I’ve been super busy recording and producing audiobooks this year and enjoying every minute.
  • I’ve been creating a new web site to promote my audiobook work.
  • I have a new agent.
  • I attended the Audio Publisher Association Conference in New York.
  • I continuously add ideas to my Evernote notebooks for blog topics, selections I could read for the Going Public project, artwork to accompany both types of creations, and more.

If I had repeatedly said “I am not motivated” or “I lack ambition”, those statements — like all words we speak — would have become a self-fulfilling prophecy!

I’ve been writing this blog for 6 years and previously had missed only 2 months (August 2009 and November 2011) when I didn’t have at least one new post. Those missed months followed major life changes for me. When I really thought about my motivation and ambition, I realized I have not lost either. Instead, I’ve gained new freedoms I previously had only imagined.

I’m still adjusting to being a full-time voice actor and audiobook narrator. My new role means that I can go to breakfast, shopping, or to a movie with Drew any day of the week. I can take a nap any time I want. With another big change in my life, it’s natural that other changes would occur, like writing less frequently on this blog.

This picture recently was shared on Facebook and nicely sums up this post:


The key is to keep reminding yourself of all the positive things you are. I have been writing a growing list of “I AM” statements, like I am talented, I am creative, and I am blessed. I pull out the list when I feel negativity creeping into my thoughts.

As you might have guessed, the last 2 statements that I added to my list are:

I am ambitious.

I am motivated.

If you’ll start keeping a list of “I AM” statements and repeating them to yourself, you’ll find that you’ll have more than a positive attitude. You’ll have a positive MINDSET!

 

Filed Under: Away From the Mic, Law of Attraction, Narrators, Voice-Over

Where does the time go?

31 May 2012

As the excellent voice-over talent says in this Staples commercial, “in a small business, it’s all you.”

I laugh each time I see this ad because I relate a lot to Dave these days!

The past 2 months have been wonderfully busy. I’ve done full production on 3 audiobooks; the finished time of each ranged from 9.5 hours to almost 13 hours. I also worked with my web designer in creating a new audiobooks site to showcase my work in this area.

With all of these big projects, I haven’t had much time to write articles here on the blog.

I am developing several ideas and expect to post a new article in the next week or so.

Thanks for your patience during my absence. I’d love to hear from you about your projects, so please leave a comment on the blog!
 

Filed Under: Away From the Mic, Business, Narrators, Other Videos, Voice-Over

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