How to put together a reading and/or presentation of your work

For the adult audience

photo: at Spoken INK, December 11, 2012 (Burnaby Writers’ Society)

It’s a tricky thing, always, saying the right thing at the right time.

Writing those words always brings to mind the delightful moment in Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, when the narrator has just introduced an ageing auntie character as being the person who understands exactly this—right word, right time—and in the moment following a smoky house-fire, just washed out along with the decorated tree and more by enthusiastic firemen, looks onto the scene and says, “Would anyone care for something to read?” Yes, always the perfect thing to say. I digress…

But to be in front of a number of other humans who have taken time from their busy lives to come and sit and listen—well, it is humbling, this thing of offering presentations.

It’s come to be a significant piece of “getting out there” as a writer, though. Gone are the days when a writer can hide away at home, and the mystique of that will be enough to make readers curious.

The promo thing is not a piece that I find easy, though the degree to which it is enjoyable rides between “not!” and “yes, I’m okay with this.” I’ll admit to moments of feeling resignation. Really, I’d rather be writing. Where are you on this? Even the most beginning writers now have to think about this, it seems.

What creates the difference between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ on this? Many factors. Where I’m at in my current writing project, is probably the most sizable determinant for whether I enjoy giving a presentation. At this very moment I am weeks away (I hope) from the completion of a novel which has been close to three years so any hour taken from that work makes me squirm.

When I’m in the looser process of earlier-days of a project, I can find joy in sharing my other works. Timing is always key and the ability to compartmentalize the disparate pieces of this work. And the capacity to understand the needs of the listeners, and my own need to connect—that is the real thing that allows me to put aside what might be eating me up about it.