There are tons of practice diaries / journal / logs out there for musicians, but I couldn’t find one designed for voice actors.
The Practice Diary for Voice Actors is now available on Amazon! It has 12 monthly calendar pages, 300 daily pages and lined pages at the back for notes or lists.
How did this Practice Diary for Voice Actors come about?
I’ve spent most of my life playing musical instruments and taking music lessons. In my time taking violin or singing lessons I would always get a bit discouraged because it seemed like my progress was so slow! No matter how much I practiced, I felt like I was making progress so slowly.
Fast forward to my voice acting career… when I started my voice acting coaching I again felt like I was progressing so slowly.
So I bought a regular day planner and started writing everything down I did that particular day for my voice over career – whether it was doing vocal exercises, practicing cold-reading scripts, submitting a recording for feedback, listening to a webinar about a VO related topic or research I did on companies. After a while I was able to look back at all that I had accomplished over several weeks and then several months so it gave me a sense of accomplishment. Any day planner can be turned into a practice diary however there are some important “rules” to remember:
Write down what you did, not what you plan to do: There are a million resources out there for planning what you want to do, and there’s definitely a place for that, but there’s something satisfying about keeping a log of everything you actually accomplished.
Be honest: When you look back on all you’ve done you want to have a sense of pride.
Resist the temptation to turn it into a to-do list: If you get ideas or inspiration, use a separate paper or notebook. Remember, a practice diary is what you did, not what you want to do.
For those who want to give it a try, here is a template of the daily pages you can use. Simply download and print out as many copies as you need.
I’d love to hear if you use this and any feedback that will make it more useful for you.