Let’s start a YouTube channel! Yes, those were my exact words to my dear writer-friend, L. M. Spilsbury some months ago, when we were chatting about how to gain more followers on our social media platforms. How hard can it be? I asked. It’ll be fun, I said. Little did I know.
It was all very exciting. We contacted a local graphic designer and came up with a lovely logo for the channel. We decided on the name Writing Stories, since we were going to talk about our writing journey, and the channel would be about writing stories, and stories about writing. I thought it was very clever, and when we did a search on YouTube, no one else had that platform.
Next, we had to decide which program to use where we could upload our conversations. With me holding down a full-time job, the bulk of the research fell on my poor friend, who looked into different platforms where we could tape our conversations about writing remotely. We needed a platform that would allow us to talk using two screens, and after careful consideration, we decided to use Riverside. It seemed to be very popular, and it provided the tools we would need to set up our chats, and there was a free version we could try before committing to a subscription. Awesome, right?
The day arrived where we would try our very first chat… and I have to tell you, it wasn’t pretty. We were both so stiff and stilted! It’s really hard to sound natural on-camera when you’re not used to it. We made so many mistakes, it was laughable, but at least we were having fun. All kidding aside, it took us many attempts to get used to chatting while being recorded. Over time, things improved, but my internet did not. Living out in the middle of nowhere presented a problem with the internet provider, and it kept kicking me off the server! Not good when you’re in the middle of a conversation. Then, the quality of my video wasn’t great either. I’m using a cheap laptop, and the camera isn’t great. I came up with a better idea. Why not try my iPhone? Well, I don’t know what happened there either, because even though I was talking up a storm, none of it got recorded. Arggh. Just when we finally got into the groove, and everything was going great, something would always glitch and we couldn’t use the recording. Sigh. It’s always something. We’re still learning, and we’re having fun, so that’s the main thing, right? Hopefully, things will be up and running smoothly very soon!