Emily Sapienza, SALT alumni just sent me this account of her audio doctor session with Ira Glass:
Sitting there listening to my piece with Ira listening made me realize how bad it is. I mean, not that it's total crap or anything, but I could really hear exactly where and how I did a bad job with the music. It was like, having him there made me hear through his ears. So even when he started talking I wanted to just be like "oh my god, I know. It's crap!"
He did a really nice thing and made a point of starting out with compliments after he heard the piece. And when we started talking about my writing he starts out saying "The writing starts out good..." But then, with an equal amount of good nature in his voice says "And then it gets REALLY BAD." And he said it in this way that was so honest, but not harsh that it actually made me smile, even though it had literally taken me almost two whole days to decide on two sentences he was referring to. But, you know, I think he was right. I just couldn't hear it before.
At one point I told him about some tape that I had, that I didn't use: A story about a woman working in a shipbuilding factory during WWII, surrounded by men, welding for the first time. I told him about how one of the men played a "joke" on her, -launching her off the top of the ship and almost killing her. His face was awesome, better than words: saying both: that is a crazy story and I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DIDN'T USE THAT TAPE!
Another thing I got out of the experience was the realization that there was this whole other direction that I could have taken the piece in. When I made the piece I thought I had to include all this tape and all these details. Ira totally zeroed in on the story. And he pointed out how I could have brought it out in the piece. So now I feel like I could go back and re-work the piece, if nothing else, as an exercise for myself.
would be fun to hear from other doctors appointments...
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