Public Performance

There is a disconnect between writing and performance.

A writer sits quietly for long hours, planning, scribbling, re-writing and editing.  A writer is often shy with people, hopeless at parties, reluctant to leave the cocoon of the study, observing mankind rather than just being a person.  Most writers find it difficult to explain precisely what they do, or how they do it: let alone justifying their existence.

A performer, on the other hand, is by nature gregarious, spends months and years perfecting delivery as well as making a quick analysis of present audience, thinking on their feet, engaging the audience’s interest for anything from ten minutes to an hour.

These, of course are stereotypes.  To survive, the writer has to make compromises with their writing to suit their agent, publisher, editor, audience.  They are expected to get out there and speak, not now and then, but regularly: in draughty halls, in over-heated lecture theatres, anywhere and everywhere.  There is room for only a couple of elusive JD Salingers, whose reputation grew with his absence from the lecture circuit.

For the rest of us, the penalty for having no public presence is failure.

I used to rely on having my books on the library shelves and one good distributor who contacted me once a quarter with a cheque.

Happy days.