Dabbling in my dream

Since posting my dreaming to this blog I have been, well doing what people with a dream do- perusing it and thinking about it. Sometimes I even get nervous that I may be commiting to believing in this dream.

I have found some great websites for people who want to make radio documentaries, I read Ira Glasses' manifesto and listened to some really helpful shows about how to get started. There was a reoccurring theme: public radio is hard to break into but in one forum someone mentioned that Alaska has lots of opportunities. So I emailed the station closes to our fish camp and the the guy in charged responded with great enthusiasm and is willing to train me and give me my own radio hour to DJ (I don't want to do that but I do what to learn something!)

The advice I read over and over again was just START, start making stories. Basically the idea behind this is that you will obviously suck in the beginning and you need to just practice so you can eventually make something decent. This is a lot easier read than done. I have many ideas in my head, people I want to interview, stories I want to tell, stories I want others to tell but there is one thing that is holding me back and haunting me.....interviewing people. And, this is the only thing that makes good radio- being a good interviewer who makes people feel at ease to open up even if there is a microphone pointing in their face. Every story I think of I instantly feel weird about asking people to do this.....really weird.

I talk all day long in front of 19 kids so I do have some minimal skills and I figured where better to start than with people everyone feels comfortable with...kids. So I have my first idea and my first deadline...since we are leaving soon. Hopefully something will come out of it. Now I need a microphone.

I recently listened to a really interesting piece about making radio-Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound

This show ended with avery inspiring story. This women from Cape Cod really voiced my feelings about public radio in such an eloquent fashion and the way she got into radio is just beautiful. She sent in this one piece in to her local station, it ended up on NPR and later she became a regular contributer to NPR and eventually wrote a book.

Listen here (it is short)