Good luck reading to your writing group!

Good to know that even wonderfully talented and published authors like yourself can get terribly nervous.

Dawn: Good luck! Does it help to be reading such a marvellous poet? Or does it make it worse?

Malcolm: I’ll be doing anothe appearance on 23 March if that helps. Though that’s not really next month, is it? Anyway you’re in Sydney we do gigs at home once or twice a year.

Maryrose: Hah! What about you, you theatrically trained cheater you! So not fair having to follow you. People almost fell out of their chairs they were laughing so hard during your reading. I think in future you have to go last. Otherwise it’s just not fair!

Rebecca: That there is a catch 22.

Diana: I love hearing other people reading and I have to say overall the standard in YA is very very high.

I definitely think it’s worth practising, Diana. When I read well, like you observed with that good reader, I sell a tonne of books. A good reading is extraordinary. The trick is to practise, read something funny, and keep it short. Like I said five minutes is perfect.

YA authors, in particular, seem to value reading very highly. (I’ve never seen a romance author read.) I hope that’s not too important, since I don’t think I’m very good at it.

1) You got laughs.

2) That Australian accent was UTTERLY convincing!

fabulous job! can’t wait for the book, now,
xoxox
m

Making a massive generalisation, it seems like an author will be quite relaxed when talking off the cuff, then read a small passage from their book and it starts out very stiffly. But then, after a minute, they start to get into it and loosen up and it sounds more natural and fun. So it sounds like you aren’t alone in your internal state prior to reading, Justine.

(Now, if only you could have done this in, say, a month when I would have been in New York, I might have been able to go. ).

i feel like i need covet and chastize a little. you’re a fiction writer and in the enviable position of being a fabulous one. people like stories, and even the yawning people listen politely because they’ve been trained for stories.

i’m a poet. i’m not a narrative poet, and contrary to popular sentiment, this does not mean i’m a bad poet either. when people give me blank looks at a reading, it’s for real. it doesn’t mean that my writing isn’t their particular cup of tea. it’s the frozen, blank, terrified, glassy-eyed, how’d i wind up here, out-to-lunch gaze of people missing all my beautiful words because they want a story…or shakespeare or frost…but that’s a tale for another time.

well, i can’t complain too much because in an informal survey of my poet friends, we’ve decided that we’re pretty much universally inspired to write poems because of all the fiction we consume. even the poets are story-addicts. (WHERE’S MY NEXT LARBALESTIER BOOK ALREADY?!) is there any chance you fiction writers are the people still secretly buying poetry?

Talking off the cuff in front of people doesn’t bother me much at all. I really enjoy doing panels and the kind of presentation you saw. (Q&A is always my favourite part.) But then I’ve been doing stuff like that for years and years now. So any nervousness I used to have is pretty much gone now.

It’s when I have to read something out loud that I wrote that I start to quake. But like I said it’s getting better.

I know it’s hard to believe but the more practice you get talking in front of people the easier it gets. Of course, there’s nothing that says you have to get better at it. There are plenty of successful writers who do no public appearances.

doing a reading would terrify me, needless to say. i am in awe of those of you who can get up and do stuff like that. you didn’t seem nervous at all when i saw you speak.