We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jarret Lemaster. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jarret below.

Jarret , appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I started narrating before I was a professional because I have 4 kids and I would read to them every night. I read the Narnia series by Lewis and Harry Potter out loud to the kids and realized that I might have a knack for this kind of work and thought I might want to try to get into narration. The truth is I am an actor as well and loved getting into the characters because it would help my boys love the stories. I had some experience in recording because I am also a musician so I just started by going to ACX and looking for projects that interested me. I started auditioning and immediately started to work. The learning curve was crazy though because I hadn’t spent much time editing files and when you are narrating entire books the chapters can be up to 45 minutes of material to edit…and i make a crap ton of mistakes. Eventually, for my work flow, I hired a full time editor so that I could focus on reading without worrying about all of the fixes I would have to do. After about 50 books I started to get pretty good at it. We will see where it goes from here:)

Jarret , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I think I answered mostly how I got into the industry but I have alway been an avid reader and thought it would be cool to get paid for it. I get paid to act and produce and have spent my adult life trying to leverage those talents to make a living that would provide for my wife and kids. IT has been a struggle at times to be a creative that has dependents but at this point in my life the work is coming in all the time. In narration I provide a life like and engaging read with a variety of voices that I hope keeps the listener’s interest and brings the authors work to life. I love to work with authors to try to help their creation really pop and become a lasting piece of art. I would say my brand is variety.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I feel like every job that a human being can do has meaning because humans have inherent value. From brick layers to stock brokers, there can be a job that someone is uniquely designed to do that will make society function better and contribute to the whole. I feel like my job is to tell stories and interpret stories because that is how culture is passed from one generation to the next. The stories we tell contain our values and beliefs, our history and what we think is funny. I find story telling to be very rewarding. I also love to create characters and I get to do that on the fly when I read books. It is really fun to create someone out of the story. I have always been better on the fly and this format is great for that sort of character work.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think one of the things that is missing in our society is reflection. With constant distraction we never get a chance to sit down and evaluate where we are in life, what our goals are, what type of person we are and what type of person that we want to be. What is our ethical standards and why do we hold to those standards, and finally how close are we to living those standards out in our own lives. I am sure that everyone needs to be doing this regularly but I am not sure that we get a chance to do it much in our culture. My job as a creative person requires this type of reflection on a daily basis. I couldn’t do what I do without it. I think that creatives often spend time doing this so that we can do the work that we need to. I think that we are philosophers to some degree and need to engage in the type of philosophy that will better help us understand the world and then interpret it well. We are interpreters after all.

Contact Info:

• Website: jarretlemasterhome.com
• Instagram: instagram/jarretlemaster

Image Credits
Jarret Lemaster