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How I beat deadline anxiety to write a book

Like a lot of people, I struggle with anxiety. 

Deadlines are particularly stressful, which is crazy because I’m in an industry in which the deadline is sacrosanct. Your editor gives you a deadline and come hell or high water, you better get that story in on time.

Fortunately, over the last 10 years, I’ve developed strategies through cognitive behavioral therapy to manage my anxiety. I may still feel anxious when a deadline approaches, but I’ve learned to cope with the stress and complete my work on schedule.

I can handle the day-to-day assignments all right, but what happens when I’m faced with a new challenge, like writing a book?

Back in 2016, I signed a contract with Routledge Taylor & Francis to write a textbook about podcasting. I knew a lot about the subject and had some opinions on how to teach it. The big unknown was I’d never written anything as long as a book.

Initially, my plan was to interview as many people as I could. That was my reporter’s brain at work. Talk to as many sources as you can and then write up what they say. That’s what I did every day at my job. What could be so hard about that?

After spending two months recording interviews with about 60 people, I realized I had just four months until my final deadline. What at first seemed a difficult but achievable goal suddenly appeared to be an impossible feat. How was I going to take 50 hours of audio and turn them into a final manuscript?

I allowed myself to panic for a moment, then after a deep breath, I developed a plan.

  • Make Your Outline Your Guide – When I pitched the textbook idea to my publisher, they asked me to create an outline. I took that document and made it the tree on which I was going to hang all of the material I’d gathered from my sources. This allowed me to break up the interviews into different chapters and gave me a structure off of which to work.
  • Divide the Work into Achievable Steps – One of the traps people with anxiety fall into is viewing an entire project as a giant mountain to climb. It’s better to divide the project into a series of steps, which are to be completed over a period of time. That way you only focus on the step at hand and not the entire task. As long as you complete each step in order, you’ll reach the mountaintop by your deadline.
  • Make Deadlines/Keep Deadlines – That final deadline is unavoidable. To finish the project on time, you must create a deadline for each of the steps of the project and then complete them in order. Not only will this move you closer to your final deadline, you’ll achieve little milestones to stave off any anxiety. “I’m making progress. I’ve finished six steps and I just have four more to go.”
  • Organize Your Time – Dedicate a set number of hours each day to work on the project. Because I had a full-time job and a podcast, and I needed time to spend with my family, I dedicated four to five hours after dinner to work on the book. When I started the actual writing process, I figured out how many words I needed to write each night to finish a chapter in time to achieve my short-term goals. Some nights were harder than others, but I was always moving forward and meeting my deadlines.
  • Take Care of Yourself – Another trap people with anxiety fall into is worrying about a project all of the time. It can consume them. I made it a point to think about the book only when I was working on it. The rest of the time I focused on my day job, podcast or family. I also made sure I was eating well and getting enough rest.
  • Look for Timesavers – The only way for me to tackle the 50 hours of audio interviews I had to work with was to pay for a transcription service. The huge amount of time and labor I saved offset the expensive of paying for the service.
  • Ask for Help – I turned to two friends to help me with the book. One was a graphic artist who provided illustrations and the other was an editor who reviewed each chapter as I finished it. The editor’s feedback was crucial to me completing the book on time. While continuing to write, I reviewed her notes to make sure I was on the right track. It was important that I didn’t get sidetracked with her corrections. She also edited my final draft before I submitted it to the publisher.
  • Build in a Safety Net – After completing the initial draft of my introduction and the first two chapters, I realized that I was going to need to write one more chapter than I’d initially thought. I didn’t need to do any new reporting, I just had to pull material from my interviews to create the new chapter. This meant finding time in my schedule. Fortunately, I’d built in some extra editing time in the final weeks of the project as a safety met. I moved the remaining writing deadlines back a couple days into the safety net, and I was able to fit the extra chapter in with very little effort.

Once I committed to following my plan and meeting all of my mini-deadlines, a sense of ease overcame me. The actual writing of the book was much less anxiety-inducing than I’d imagined. Each deadline achieved was another step closer to completion and another “attaboy” to my ego.

I turned the book in a day before my deadline, happy in my achievement and proud of how I’d beaten the anxiety monster. 

As always, if you’d like to suggest a topic for us to cover or individual to interview on It’s All Journalism, drop us an email at  editor@itsalljournalism.com.

— Michael O’Connell

This essay first appeared in the It’s All Journalism weekly email, follow this link to sign up for the newsletter.

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Creating a Podcast: How to Edit Audio in Audacity

It’s All Journalism host Michael O’Connell explains how to edit and mix down multiple audio tracks to create a finished podcast using the free open-source Audacity program.

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I got podcasting on my mind

I’ve been thinking a lot about podcasting lately.

Here’s the slideshow presentation I’m giving Friday, Oct. 20, at the Journalism Interactive conference hosted by the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrell College of Journalism.

Starting Saturday, Nov. 4, I’ll be teaching my first class as an adjunct professor at American University.

I’ll be teaching the COMM-620 Seminar on Audio Storytelling class for the Fall 2017 semester. It’s a six-week Master’s course — eight Saturdays, from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Pretty intense, but I’m up for the challenge.

Thanks to Margot Susca, the program head, I got the opportunity to create the syllabus [COMM-620-2-syllabus-Final01] for the podcasting class, a first for American University’s School of Communications.

I’m sure I’ll have lots to add to this and I’ll update the experiences here as they come.

Wish me luck!

Michael O’Connell

 

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Turn Up the Volume — A Down and Dirty Guide to Podcasting

If you spend any time reviewing the listings on Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes) or GooglePlay, you’ll quickly discover there are a lot of podcasts out there — thousands of them, in fact — covering a vast variety of subjects. Want to delve into the seamy side of political corruption within an American city? Check out an episode of Gimlet Media’s Crimetown. How about the fundamentals of pig farming? There’s a podcast about it called Swinecast with more than 900 episodes. If there’s a subject out there, there’s probably a podcast about it.

Podcast listenership continues to climb. Edison Research revealed in The Podcast Consumer 2017  report that monthly podcast listenership grew from 21% to 24%  over the last year. That growth has been consistent since Edison began tracking podcast listening in 2008. With the growth in listenership and awareness of podcasts, there is increased demand for new and interesting audio content.

Digital technology has made it easy for the average person or business to produce their own podcast. But most people have zero understanding of what skills it takes to produce good audio content. Turn Up the Volume — A Down and Dirty Guide to Podcasting is aimed at the fledgling podcaster, the person who has a passion for a subject and wants to share it with an audience.

Order Turn Up the Volume — A Down and Dirty Guide to Podcasting.

Each chapter introduces a new topic the beginning podcaster needs to address as he works toward the successful launch of his first episode. Topics include identifying the audience; what equipment is needed to set up a studio; how to record, edit and post an episode online; and how to sustain and grow a podcast.

In writing Turn Up the Volume, Author Michael O’Connell shares not only his own expertise of producing a podcast, but the experiences and advice of more than 60 successful podcasters. They provide insight and offer tips on the planning and production processes for launching a podcast.

As a textbook, Turn Up the Volume offers a step-by-step progression through the planning and production of a podcast. The book includes a history of podcasting, an overview of the industry and resources for educators and students, including exercises, a vocabulary list, bibliography, useful links and technology recommendations. In addition, Turn Up the Volume looks at the challenges a new podcaster will face in creating engaging content and growing an audience. It explores the business aspects of starting a podcast, including legal considerations, marketing options and various monetization strategies.

In total, Turn Up the Volume is not just a how-to book, it’s an examination of the philosophy behind podcasting, from the germ of an idea to long-term sustainment. O’Connell presents the material in a straightforward manner with real-life examples from his own podcasting experience as well as that of the industry experts the interviews.

View all the online educational resources for Turn Up the Volume.


Michael O’Connell

Michael O’Connell has been writing, editing and producing new stories for print and the online environment for more than 35 years. Currently, he’s the senior digital editor at Federal News Radio in Washington, D.C.

For the last five years, he’s been one of the producers and is the host of the It’s All Journalism podcast, which is available for download every Thursday on Apple Podcasts and on the PodcastOne network.

He speaks regularly at journalism conferences about podcasting, and, in June 2017, Routledge Taylor and Francis will release his new textbook, Turn Up the Volume — A Down and Dirty Guide to Podcasting.

This fall O’Connell will put his research to practical use when he teaches a podcasting class in the weekend M.A. program in Journalism and Digital Storytelling at American University.

Email Michael at moconnell207@gmail.com

Follow on Twitter: @frolixmike

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Overview: Turn Up the Volume — A Down and Dirty Guide to Podcasting

Introduction

The introduction provides an overview of the current state of podcasting and includes a brief history of the medium. Podcasting can trace its roots back to 1999, when a group of developers at Netscape fleshed out the Real Simple Syndication (RSS) technology. This allowed users to subscribe to an information feed on a website. Whenever the RSS feed was updated, users would receive the update automatically without having to visit the website. Although this technology was originally text-based, developers Dave Winer and Adam Curry improved on it in 2000 to include audio files. Three years later, Winer updated the technology again for journalist Christopher Lydon, so that listeners could automatically receive Lydon’s audioblog, Radio Open Source, the first true podcast. This overview will include a timeline of key events in podcasting from these early beginnings to today.
Continue Reading …

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Turn Up the Volume: Tenets of Good Podcasting

At some point during the research stage of Turn Up the Volume, I began creating a list of best practices for podcasters, sort of a “10 Commandments” all podcasters should follow if they wanted to succeed. Each new tenet was based on themes that had emerged from my conversations with the 60 or so podcasters I interviewed for the book.

As I began jotting down ideas, I quickly shot through the first “10 Commandments” and began adding more and more. Eventually, the list grew to over 30. I went back over it and winnowed it down to these 21, combining concepts that seemed to be related.Continue Reading …

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Turn Up the Volume: Resource List

The following resource list can be used to supplement the materials in Turn Up the Volume, providing useful reading material and podcasts that can be added to the curriculum.

Articles

Digital Publishing: How the New York Times and Washington Post are Changing the Podcast Field

“Edison Research Hacks the Commuter Code: AM/FM listeners switch 22 times per commute,” Edison Research, (2016, April 7).

“EoFire’s Income Reports,” EoFire (Entrepreneur On Fire) podcast’s monthly income reports.

Home of the Brave – A Walk on The Beach

Home of the Brave – Najibullah In America

Home of the Brave – An Introduction to Charles Bowden

“How to Measure Podcast Downloads” by George Weiner, Whole Whale.

“The Podcast Consumer 2017,” Edison Research, (2017, April 18).

Continue Reading …

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Exercise 1 – Breaking Down a Podcast Episode

Instructions: Pick a podcast episode with multiple elements, such as music, interviews, news clips and natural sound. As you’re listening to the episode, pay attention to the timecode and make notes of when each segment begins. After you’ve listened to the entire episode, go back over your timeline and flesh out your notes, describing what happened in each segment. Be sure to include as many details as you can.Continue Reading …

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Exercise 2 – Compare and Contrast 2 Podcast Episodes

The more episodes a podcaster produces, the better his approach to audio production will become. In fact, many things may change over the lifetime of a podcast, including its structure or focus.

Instructions: Choose a podcast to listen to, preferably one that’s been around for a while, with at least 50 or even 100 episodes. Using the same procedure as Exercise 1, listen to two episodes of the same podcast, one early episode and one more recent. Write down the timecode and make notes about each segment. After you’ve listened to each episode, go back over your timeline and flesh out your notes, describing what happened in each segment. Be sure to include as many details as you can.Continue Reading …

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Exercise 3 – Telling a Story with Identifiable Sound

Podcasts are an audio medium, so a produced piece needs to fill in all the details that our other senses would normally pick up on. How do you tell someone that it’s night or day? Or if you’re inside or outside? Maybe you’re telling a story about a sea captain on boat. Does the narrator just say, “Captain Davy Jones walked a across the deck of his tugboat?” Is that the best, most interesting way to relay that information? Probably not.

Audio may at first seem to be a limited storytelling medium, but it’s actually superior in many ways because of its limitations. All you need to do is engage the audience with your words, your voice and the sounds you use to illustrate your story. Those are all things you can control.Continue Reading …

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Learn How To Podcast

Turn Up the Volume equips journalism students, professionals, and others interested in producing audio content with the know-how necessary to launch a podcast for the first time. It addresses the unique challenges beginner podcasters face in producing professional level audio for online distribution. Beginners can learn how to handle the technical and conceptual challenges of launching, editing, and posting a podcast.

Order this new book by It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell.

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