I read it aloud sometimes. And I, again, when I watched my aunt write this book, she had 36 index cards for 36-page books, spread out on the living room. We lived in Wyoming, and so it looked like you were flying over the Midwest, you know, these little squares everywhere. And it was a sunken living room. That’s like Amelia Bedelia, it’s a sunken living room. And I remember she looked at these cards and she picked up like the card number 2, card number 8, and just retyped everything because she had typed those, retyped those, she had to do a bunch more.
And she would go in, she would read it silently, and she would read it out loud because when a story’s being read to a child, it has to not only read right, it has to sound right. And a lot of times, you know, if you read, you know, popular fiction aloud, sometimes it just doesn’t sound very good, and the child is very sensitive to this and so you have to make sure it sounds right, not only reads right. And so that, sort of that lesson of watching her labor over this, you know, 36-page book was very instructive.
And so I listen for the sound. And, again, also advertising; how something is delivered. I’ve listened to thousands of voice tracks trying to, you know, cast people for commercials, people for radio commercials, and there just has to be a certain quality, because you’ve written the words, now you have to have a voice quality that will bring those to life. And sometimes you’ll find a voice that you love so much, you rewrite what you’ve written to fit that voice.
