This week I was delighted to hear that the actor I wanted will record the audiobook of my new novella. I like seeing my writing take new forms. Translators and actors know a writer’s sentences from the inside, inhabit our grammar and the rhythms of our voices sometimes more knowingly than we do ourselves.Some writers are wary of translations and adaptations, afraid their work will be misunderstood or misrepresented. I’m just curious, and keen to stand back and let other people do their jobs. Correspondence with translators is delightful; no other reader, not even an editor, is likely to ask about the exact implications and provenance of a dialect word or the significance of an architectural detail that tells readers something about a family’s social class and aspirations and so is tricky to translate for a different culture.Sometimes the writer is the only person who can make it easier. The French translator of one of my books came to a discussion between a parent and child about whether and how much syrup could be added to porridge. I had golden syrup in mind but hadn’t spelt it out. I’m sure there are French porridge-eaters – feel free to write in – but hazard that it’s a minority breakfast choice there. The porridge itself required thought in translation, and the syrup was a further complication; French sirop is usually what we’d call cordial in English. Is this maple syrup, my translator asked, or more like molasses? Make it honey and move on, I said.There are literary contexts in which the difference between golden syrup and honey would matter. Maybe a character is vegan, or believes that honey is natural and therefore healthier than sugar syrup. Maybe they grew up using golden syrup, and the switch to honey indicates a change in class or ideological allegiance. Maybe the green-and-gold tin and the lion and the bees remind someone of childhood or home. In this case, not. But only the author can say so.I love these discussions because I think about every word and sentence of my books in precisely such detail, and understandably no one else cares. I don’t want to control my books’ lives in the world. When one was made into a TV series, I was asked if I wanted to write the screenplay. I didn’t because I don’t write for performance. I’ve never written a play or script. It’s not my medium and I’d far rather have someone whose calling and expertise are right for the job. I enjoyed seeing the changes and was fascinated to spend a couple of days on set, but I was a privileged observer and guest more than a maker.Audiobooks are different because the text is mine. I love reading out loud, my own or another writer’s work, but it’s not why I write. I’m pleased but slightly puzzled that audiences at book events like to hear a writer read, because it seems to me that any reader could do that for themselves.Writing for performance is different from writing for silent, private reading. When I read to an audience, it’s always an adapted text. Many writers’ reading copies of their own books are scrawled with deletions and changes, particularly around direct speech. I rarely use speech marks anyway, but they’re useless for reading out loud unless you’re an actor. I need to add a lot of “he said” and “she said”, or find an elegant way round, for listeners who can’t see dialogue laid out on the page.I try to be sparing with description anyway, but because reading out loud is much slower than silent reading I assume that listeners’ tolerance for landscape and interiors and weather is even more limited than readers’. I cut hard.I think writing for silent reading can approach closer to polyphony than reading out loud. In my novella, there’s a middle-aged Irish man, an older Geordie Englishwoman, a young Londoner. In my head and I hope the readers’, they have different voices. For the audiobook, even with a superb reader, we have to choose. It’s a more embodied form.[ Thirteen audiobooks for summer: Tales of family, history, death and humanityOpens in new window ]I’m happy for readers and listeners to meet my writing in whatever form suits. Reading out loud has a long and respectable history and makes books more available to more people. As someone whose life revolves around reading and writing, I listen to podcasts and read on the page. Text and performance are both good of their kind, and not the same thing.