Show Preparation

Holiday season episodes

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Sleeping bay in a christmas hat.
Even holidays can cause sleepless nights.

Hi friends,

Jut a quick note to everyone regarding my holiday season episodes and some other changes.

First up, as I mentioned on a couple of episodes I work in the hospitality industry in a tourist town in South Africa. So this time of the year is very busy for me. I work long hours and I’m usually exhausted afterwards.

Not to fret though, I should be able to maintain my release schedule. However to make sure I’ve got something fresh for you to fall asleep to every week I need to take a bit of a shortcut.

For this reason I’m going to dial back on the original stories. Those take a lot of prep work. I will instead to some reading of various books, so for a few weeks the tone and content of the show will be a bit different.

Stories of Mutewallow and the residents of Southcliffe will be back in the new year, but for now I will be sharing the words and stories of others.

I’m curious how you listeners like the format though, so let me know on social media or pop me a mail at contact@sleepytimetales.net

Stay rested

Dave

Relaunch of the podcast

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Hi all. So it’s been an interesting few months since the first episode back in March. I’ve been happy to hear from a number of listeners that the show has helped people get a good night’s sleep and the download numbers are very solid. So there are even more just quietly benefiting from what I’m doing.

It’s a good feeling to think that I’m helping people out there, I have to say.

But I definitely made few mistakes with the show early on. The Twin Peaks stuff was probably a mistake. A bit too dark for what I was trying to do. Especially being every second episode.

And my other big mistake was trying to do two episodes a week initially.

By putting myself under that kind of pressure early I put myself into a position that was difficult to recover from. And while overall I think I’ve done a decent job with the show I’ve sometimes been a bit short of time and it’s compromised the quality.

So I’m doing a soft relaunch of the show. I’m spending the next few weeks preparing stories and scripts and getting ahead of my recording schedule so that I have more time to polish. So that I can do a better job for you, the listener.

Never fear though. There will still be the usual episodes every week, including the Cat Naps, but I am doing some episode formats that don’t need too much preparation.

I will still be there to drone you to sleep every week. 🙂 So keep an eye out for Season 2, coming 7th October. There won’t be huge changes, but the stories should be a bit more consistent in their tone and better prepared.

Stay rested, see you then.

Dave

Biting off more than I can chew

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I managed for a couple of weeks to do two episodes a week. A ‘couple’ in the strictest sense of the term, I managed 2 weeks. 🙂 Turns out that recording and editing two episodes a week of a sleep aid podcast wasn’t good for my sleep. So now I’m tapering off a bit.

The more free-form improvised episodes I’ve been releasing are more achievable though. If I was going for more formal written episodes like my first two, even weekly releases would probably be beyond me. Full time work at my day job as well as family life means finding the balance.

I also really need a proper mic. My headset works okay, but I need to edit out a lot of disturbing lip-smacking noises that would not help people to sleep. And that takes up most of my time in the edit.

*** Don’t forget to take a look at my latest episode or the archives for a night’s sleep.


Sleep aid podcast – Launch day incoming

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The introductory episode of our sleep aid podcast will launch on Monday the 4th of March. Once the show is up and running regularly, release day will be every Monday.

My thinking here is that it’s a fresh week, so it’s a good time for people to have something new to help them through the stresses of a new week.

The initial aim though is to try release initially on an accelerated schedule. Because of the sleep aid podcast concept it will be helpful for listeners to get a solid 6-8 hours of content to put on in the background overnight. So I would like for anyone discovering the show, even early on, to have an archive.

So at the very least we will have an episode every Monday, but I’m hoping for one extra every week, as soon as I can get episodes written and recorded.

As mentioned elsewhere the writing is the challenging part. So expect some experimentation in the next couple of weeks.

The Challenges of Writing a Bedtime Story

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I had a feeling the challenges of writing a bedtime story would be significant when I decided to do this podcast. I’m a very lapsed writer, I used to do it a lot when I was younger, but life happens, and career and family and things like sitting down for a few hours become an unbelievable luxury.

So producing a story to quite specific requirements has proved a challenge. I need to fill about 45 – 50 minutes, it needs to be an interesting enough premise to get people to listen, but not so fascinating that people actually stay awake to hear the end. Also, one hopes it isn’t too annoying for some people to listen to. 🙂

45 minutes at a fairly slow reading speed is about 5500 words, which as it turns out is a LOT! Part of the premise of this show is also to improvise some diversions, so falling a bit short is fine, but I need to try get close.

Writing a bedtime story every week is going to be tough, I’m honestly not sure I will be able to do it, early on at least. I’ll probably need to alternate with some other content. Deciding on that will be the next challenge.