Thinking about Talking: The Introduction

(For an audio version of this blog, click the link above.)

Hi there, and welcome to the blog. Thanks for checking it out.

My name is Christy, and I’m a voice actor - corporate narration and e-learning mostly, with the occasional commercial thrown in. This is a relatively new career for me. I’m a singer and a songwriter and a teacher, and at some point - about seven years ago - I began looking into voiceover training, as I’d always been interested in and curious about it. I did a coaching session, took some classes, practiced, tried to read up on the craft. But life just kept happening, and I kept having to set this particular desire aside, time after time.

In the spring of 2020, when Covid was really starting to be a thing and I found myself at home with all three of my school-aged kids, the urge to explore voiceover work came back. At that time, we had moved to another city and I wasn’t working outside the home at all. I needed something new to do and think about. So I resumed my coaching, finally got some demos recorded, and sent them out into the world. I booked my first real job in December of 2020 and have been working at it ever since.

There are a lot of voiceover-related blogs out there. I read many of them. The ones that I read most often have a lot of great advice from folks who have been in the profession a long time. Or funny stories. Or helpful tips about how to improve your VO career.

This will not be one of those blogs. I’ve been in the business, in earnest, for just over a year. While I’ve certainly learned some lessons along the way, I hardly think that my 1+ year of experience qualifies me as any kind of expert. I still have so very much to learn.

What I’m interested in reflecting on and exploring is different aspects of how we communicate with one another. Primarily through voice, yes, seeing as how this is a somewhat-related-to-VO blog. But not just the voice. As I mentioned earlier, I have three children - one of whom uses a speech generating device (SGD) for communication purposes. This is something that has greatly altered how I view talking, and communication in general. I’m particularly interested in the role that technology can and will play with the voice world - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

So, I hope you‘ll enjoy reading, and that you might even share your experiences along the way. Thanks for being here!