Danbury Radio Show Swings and Misses With Their Production of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’

I love Halloween and really was hoping to do something special for the holiday on the I-95 Morning Show.

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So I started kicking ideas around with my partners Ethan and Dave and one stood out to me, we could do scary short stories. I liked this idea then but that wouldn't be enough. Having a good idea is one thing but I did, what I always do, is I grabbed the ball and started running with it without taking a breath.

I immediately made a few decisions, I would do Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", I would do the full reading, I would try and act and I'd add production elements to the recording. There are several problems with my decision, the story times out at about 14 minutes without any production elements and I really can't afford to waste a lot of time on something that may only get played once a year.

I barreled blindly into this project, ignoring the length and that had consequences a plenty. I thought if I read it faster I'll save some time, well, I know better. Reading faster made it sound rushed. I spent hours recording and editing this thing and when it was done I wanted to play it for someone, anyone but surprise, surprise no one wanted to listen to 15 minutes of me reading an old timey story.

We discussed playing the whole thing on the radio show and I called that off pretty quickly because I said to myself, what would you say if Ethan or Dave brought this to you? I can tell you what I would have said, a lot. I would have made fun of the concept, ridiculed my friends and then did some yelling if they insisted. Or, I would have edited it into chunks and played it back in pieces so I could make fun of it ten seconds at a time.

Listen if you want, it's not great.

Here is my real problem I still want to finish it. I want to cut all of my dialogue again, slower, edit it and add so much more production. I want to add a thud, a thump and slapping sounds when he attacks the old man, I want to add the flutter of bird's wings, I just want to do it better but I don't have the time.

If I could, I'd spend the next 6 weeks crafting this to perfection but when I was done I'd be staring down the barrel of the same problem I have now, no one wants to hear it.

Why am I being so honest? Creativity matters to me, the process of taking a small idea and working it into a complete piece of content is what I live for but there are failures.  There are times I make mistakes about what content I should be creating, how long I should spend on it and how I share it with the world. This was a bad idea, that wasted a lot of my time and came out poorly and I loved every second I spent working on it.

What I'm saying is sometimes we need to just do the thing, whatever it may be and get it out of us,. If it's a bad creation, oh well. There is another idea coming right behind it and that could be the one you surprise yourself with.

Love y'all.

Louis