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The
Other Side of Readings
A
while back I waxed lyrical about the pleasures of being read
to. Turns out doing the reading is not so much fun. More of a bad,
scary, neurosis-inducing kind of a thing. Talk about your social
anxiety.
You're standing in front of people. They're looking at you, expecting
to be entertained by something you wrote that you're reading. You
will get instant feedback. They will judge you. They will laugh
(or not) as you read. This may or may not be a good thing. They
will shift in their seats (is the seat uncomfortable or are they
bored?). They will come up to you afterwards and say things about
your reading which you will not hear because you are still in trembling
deer-in-headlights shock from having read in front of real live
people you're not married to. Or worse: they will run away immediately
after your reading, heads down to avoid making eye contact. Or worst
of all: there will be no audience.
I've read my fiction out loud at a formal reading twice in my life.
First at Conflux in Canberra,
Australia and just recently, at WisCon
in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Both were very scary. At Conflux the
audience was small and I read for barely five minutes. So I can't
remember a thing. No one complimented me on my accent. Perhaps cause
they're all Aussies too?
In the US there's always the possibility that the accent factor
will work for me. In Texas when I was meeting Scott's
relatives for the first time they kept telling me how much they
loved my accent. "Could you say that again?" they'd request
in an accent so charmingly exotic to my ears that I couldn't help
but comply. "I just love the way you talk," they'd say.
Me too, I'd think, but not say.
After my WisCon reading only one person came up to me and complimented
me on my accent. Apparently most of the WisCon crowd are now so
inured to my Aussie cadences that they've ceased floating along
on the velvet clouds of my foreign-accented dulcets not really hearing
or caring what's being said. It seems that I've become a WisCon
home town girl and will thus have to work a whole lot harder to
earn their praise. A tough crowd the WisCon crowd.
The WisCon reading consisted of me, Chris
Barzak, Gwenda Bond
and Scott Westerfeld
reading from our YA novels. We all have many friends at WisCon.
So our audience was large. Turns out this is not a good thing.
I organised the damn thing so I introduced us all, and attempted
banter with the audience, feeling my cheeks getting hotter and hotter.
In the audience people were shivering and complaining about the
air conditioning. Oh good, I thought.
I read first. I recommend it. Even though my heart didn't stop beating
in my ears and fingertips and (strangely) behind my knees until
Scott had finished, it didn't beat so loud that I couldn't hear
and appreciate the others. Reading first means there's no scary
tough act to follow, you lessen the risk of fainting and if you
suck the audience will have forgotten by the end (the downside is
that if you were good they'll have forgotten that too). Barzak,
Bond and Westerfeld all read great. I was wise going first.
Not that order really matters. Once you're finished, whether you
went first or last, you'll still have no clue if you were good or
not and nothing anyone tells you about how it went will help. I
don't remember a word I read at WisCon. I know my mouth moved and
I read the words on the pages in front of me, but I don't remember
any of them, or whether I read too fast or too slow or too loud
or too soft. For all I know I could've fallen to the ground and
started talking in tongues (though surely one of my friends would've
mentioned that).
I do
remember the looks and expressions on everyone's faces (ranging
from comatose to alarmed). I remember that no-one laughed. Not even
my husband who I imagined I'd primed to laugh. I caught one wry
smile, but the smiler in question was gazing lovingly at his partner.
I fear it had nothing to do with my story.
On the bright side: no-one laughed at the non-funny bits, no-one
got up and left, no notes were passed, there were no whispered conversations
and I wasn't heckled. At the end I was clapped, not booed (though
USians are a polite lot, so the risk of being booed is negligible).
Best of all: it ended. And three hours later I stopped shaking.
If it's such an ordeal, you may be asking yourself, why read?
I've been asking myself that very question. There's an obvious answer:
you read to promote yourself. After all the not-very-subtle subtext
of all public appearances if you're a book-producing writer is buy
my book. Hell, it's the subtext of these musings, of this website.
Buy my book! Buy
my book! Buy
my book! I'm a freelance writer, if people don't buy my books
then editors won't publish future ones and there'll be this whole
tricky, not-being-able-to-pay-the-rent-and-eat situation, and it'll
be back to civilian life for me.
Of course, I didn't read from my available-for-purchase book, The
Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, I read from my next
book which isn't out till next March. How likely is it that the
people who were at my Conflux or WisCon readings are going to remember
by the time Magic or Madness is out? Not very. So other
than the buy-my-book imperative why read?
Because I imagine (pray) that I'll get better and less nervous the
more I read. Karen
Joy Fowler doesn't go red and her hands don't shake when she
reads.
Because it makes me a better writer. In Mexico
every time Scott or me had written a chapter or two or three we'd
read it out loud to the other so they could (gently) critique it.
Turned out the most valuable part of this was not the criticism
and comments (though that was great) but hearing instantly whether
sentences sucked or not. Nothing like reading aloud to hear them
clunkers.
Because I love being read to. A good reading can completely transform
a text. Something you thought only dramatic turns out to be wryly
funny. Complexity and nuance are added. You finally figure out how
the heroine's name is meant to be pronounced. The story is not the
same story it's richer, more alive—you won't forget it. I
want to do that.
New York City, 5 June 2004
© 2004 Justine Larbalestier
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