The Art of Not-Writing...

I wrote 6 (well...5+) pages of an audio Comedy sketch this weekend.

But you're like, "Yeah, sure, ANYONE can write a Comedy sketch on their days off. What I REALLY wanna know is how to NOT write!"

Well, my friend, I can help you there!

So here's what you do:

You go to Archive.org and find your favorite The Adventures of Superman OTR radio serial.

More or less at random, I selected the 17-part "The Secret Of Meteor Island" (a 1948 serial featuring Batman and Robin!!!).

I found it here, toward the bottom.

Then you download the .zip file. "What? I thought we were not-writing here?!" Just trust me, this will take quite a while to download. That's LOT'S of time not-writing!

After it's downloaded, take some time figuring out which drive or backup drive you wish to store it on. Believe me, if you spend enough time considering just the PERFECT place to store it, you will find yourself not-writing plenty! :)

THEN... unpack the zipped files. (That will not take as much time as you like, but while you wait, you're still not-writing, so your time isn't wasted.)

Next, you want to eliminate those shrill intros and outros from every in-between episode (Parts 2-16), so open up the .mp3 files with an audio-editing program. I'm broke, so I use Audacity. (It's free right here.)

So open up the first episode in Audacity and listen to the entire 15-minute episode. This will give you the sense of where the commercial breaks come in. (To be more precise, during this serial they aren't really commercial breaks but PSAs about getting along with your fellow Americans. So you actually might want to leave these in, if you don't mind the disruption to the flow of the narrative.)

You'll find that (approximately) the first 3 minutes are non-narrative, so your first cut will be there. Simply highlight the section you want to excise (in the Edit drop-down, there's a "Select" function, then the choices "All", "Start to Cursor" and "Cursor to End", which are immeasurably helpful!) and then DELETE.

That PSA break in the "middle" (it's actually 5 to 7 minutes into the program once you've deleted the Opening and first break) can get tricky. What I recommend is finding the point before the break that you want to start cutting, then generate 3 seconds of silence. Then find the point after the break in which you wish to resume the narrative, and generate 3 more seconds of silence. The significance of this action is that you can zoom your view out much further and still see the SILENT sections at the beginning and end of the break you wish to excise. You'll still need to zoom in much closer to cut out what's left of the SILENCE you have generated, but that's a great deal easier than trying to scroll from the end of a break back to the beginning. (Trust me, this makes a lot of sense when you're doing it.)

The reason I recommend 3 seconds (as opposed to the default of 30 seconds) is because 1 second seems to be too short to see clearly while zoomed-out, and 30 is just a buggar when you're zoomed-in.

After editing that "middle" break, the end is as easy to select and delete as the beginning (since you have that "Select Cursor to End" function available to you).

After the episode is in the shape you want it in, simply go to File and "Export as mp3".

Having completed an episode, you have a rough road map in your head of what you want to cut and where to find it.

I recommend doing as many episode as you have the time/mental energy to do. It gets easier the more you do it in one sitting, but sometimes when you pick it back up after an absence it's like re-learning it. You've lost the "flow" of it.

When you're done, pop these bad boys into your mp3 player and enjoy yourself some 2:14:09 hours (as opposed to 3:47:48 hours) of Superman OTR goodness!!! :D

And THAT is one way to not-write on a weekend!

Enjoy! :D