The home straight

Hello and happy new year!

Like most people, I don’t necessarily leap out of bed on January 1st with passion in my belly and hope in my heart but this year is a little bit different because I actually have something really concrete to look forward to. And, guess what, so do you!

Yes, friends, The Second Circle Series 4: BAD SEX is NEARLY FINISHED. I am holding off confirming a release date for just another week while I wrap up my end of things but I am very, very optimistic that it will be with you early February. Episodes will come out weekly and as supporters of the series, you lot will be the first to hear them before I release them to the general public the following week.

It has been an intense few months and I have had so many setbacks of one form or another, including my entire family getting COVID in December. It’s actually hilarious to me that I thought I’d be able to make this podcast in less than a year given everything else going on in my life (and indeed the world) and believe me I have learnt a LOT about workflow and setting realistic deadlines and, well, project management. Because that’s a big part of what I’ve been doing here. I’ve not had a huge team, of course. Just my editor and my audio producer. So the amount of stuff *I’ve* had to juggle on top of the actual, ya know, journalism and presenting has blown my mind.

It’s been great, though. I have really, really enjoyed it (when I haven’t been crying into my wine about how hard it is, obvs). I’ve loved the creative challenge of turning my skills to a new medium and I feel like I’ve really thrived on a longer-term project. So much of freelance journalism is quick turnarounds. The max I’ll really spend on something is a week or so. So getting stuck into a bigger piece of work, getting to really immerse myself in it, beaver away and see it come together over weeks and months has felt immensely satisfying. I’d definitely like to do more of this kind of work.

As I approach the finish line, my main challenge is to stay focussed so I can get it wrapped up really well and then try to do a decent job of the publicity because, of course, I am also the PR and marketing department. And it IS a challenge. First of all, with my eye already on the finish line my brain is going ten-to-the-dozen thinking about “What next?” 

Second of all, I really don’t relish the task of trying to market it. Publicity is a WHOLE OTHER JOB and I just… don’t want to do it. It’s very hard, it doesn’t draw from my main skillset and… honestly, I’m not sure why I feel like I have to justify this.

I think as freelancers in this insane #hustleculture we find ourselves in, we are expected to relish the task of putting on a new hat, taking on a second job on top of the job we’re already doing. But I don’t. I don’t relish it at all. I fundamentally do not want to have to market my podcast AS WELL AS MAKE IT. But sadly I do not have the budget to pay anyone else to do it so I’d better gear myself up. 

Of course, I’m very much hoping you lovely lot will give me a hand too by telling absolutely everyone you know about the series! And I will definitely be hounding you to spread the word a bit closer to the time as well. <3

Anyway, that’s all for the coming weeks. Let me give you a run down of where I’m at just now.

What I’ve been up to

Piecing the story together

This is definitely the part that has challenged me most. Ironically, it is actually the part that is most similar to my day-to-day job as a feature writer, it’s just that it’s on a much larger scale than I’ve generally worked before. A podcast episode is already longer form than most features I write and a series is another beast altogether. Not only do you want each episode to hang together but there also needs to be a coherent thread running through the entire series.

So, you have all the interview material, the sources, you’ve done all the research, you have the facts, figures and context, and you’re trying to tease the narrative out of it. It needs to be tight but it also needs to be compelling. You want the reader or listener to feel like the story is unfolding. This can be tricky to do, especially when you’ve spent weeks immersed in the thing, your context thickening and your understanding deepening all the time. Taking yourself back to the beginning, and finding that initial thread of intrigue to guide you through can be a real endeavour. If you’re lucky you will have a brilliant editor to work with, someone who is not so “up close and personal” with the material, who can zoom out and help you visualise the architecture of it.

Which is an extremely poncy way of saying I found this part hard! But that’s OK! That’s actually been thrilling, in its own way. And I *was* lucky enough to have a brilliant editor, Lucy Douglas, (hire her!) who saw my chaotic first drafts not as the work of a flailing nincompoop, but as an exciting puzzle to solve.

Scripting the voiceover links

This has been fun! Writing for audio is a very different ballgame to writing for print and it’s been great playing around with it. As the host, I’ve wanted to sound authoritative but also like I’m someone you could be mates with (which you are!) but I also want to sound like me and to talk about the subject in the way that I talk about it, in real life: Critically, thoughtfully, empathetically, but also irreverently, sometimes. 

I’ve also had to think a lot about my sentence structure. In my written work, I’ll be the first to confess, I bloody love a subordinate clause. Even six years on a tabloid couldn’t beat the sub-clause out of me! I just went right back to it, like a homing pigeon, the minute I was writing for myself again. But I quickly realised they don’t work so well in audio. What the eye can take in in an instant, the ear far more quickly loses track of. And reading them out is also a nightmare. While writing my links I often used to whisper the words out loud to myself as I went to see how it sounded. Not only was it really helpful but it also made me feel like a sort of tortured genius, muttering away to myself in my freezing attic which, after all, is only a few steps away from the truth. Substitute “genius” for an adjective of your choosing. Anyway, I lost count of the amount of times I lost the thread of my own sentence and I swiftly moved to a shorter, punchier style.

Recording the voiceover links

This was one of those things I thought would be fun but has proved… less so. If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen I got laryngitis a month or two ago. This is absolute classic Franki. I actually had laryngitis while making a good chunk of Series 3 of The Second Circle (you can hear it in some of the interviews). I know how to manage it but obviously that was a setback I could have done without.

Since then the voiceover recording has gone pretty smoothly although it turns out I just find it very, very boring. I don’t enjoy the diligence of it. It’s not that I find it difficult. I’ve found my “presenter voice” comes fairly easily and, most of the time, I’ve been happy after two or three takes but I learnt the hard way this week never to rely on one take, even if it sounded “fine” when you said it. It’s amazing how different things can sound back home at my desk.

That being said, it’s been reasonably painless (other than the laryngitis) and I’ve now got four in the bag, with two episodes left to do next week. Which leads me onto…

What’s next

Audio editing and production

Friends, I have NEVER been more grateful for your support than I am at the moment where I get to send all my audio files and scripts over to my producer and know that my work is done. The episode is out of my hands. 

I’ve done all the editing and production myself on previous series of The Second Circle and it is a HUGE job which, like the PR and marketing, is simply not drawn from my existing area of expertise. Don’t get me wrong, I learnt a lot from that process, and that was valuable, but MY GOD does it feel good to be able to hand it all over to someone else this time around. And not just any “someone else” but the incredible Anouszka Tate (hire her!) who has held my hand every step of the way and is now engaged in making the finished episodes sound slick and beautiful. I can’t wait to share them with you!

Publicity

Urgh. As discussed above, I’m really not looking forward to this bit. But we are where we are. So! Best crack on. The main thing I need to do is write a press release to send out to other journalists. I also plan to pitch some written pieces based on my findings in the series and I need to put myself forward as a guest on some other podcasts too (speaking of which, if you have a podcast and you’d like me to come and talk about bad sex, hit me up!). And I have a bit of social media stuff to plan and organise too.

Release the damn thing!

Eeeeeeeeeek!! Confirmed date coming soon but it’s happppeeennniiiiiiinnnnnggggg!

The BAD SEX newsletter is written by freelance journalist Franki Cookney. Subscribe for exclusive behind-the-scenes insights into the podcast-making process and get access to the new series before anyone else.