Just had a reply from the organiser of tonight's event confirming we're on. 'Looking forward to it,' she said. 'Unfortunately I won't be there.'
Hmm.
It's a grey rainy evening so my audience may be small, reminding me of an event from 2012 when the sun shone. Here's an extract from my blog at the time:
So there we were the three of us, me, internationally-renowned author Adele Geras, and the Duke of Edinburgh's official biographer, and all down to speak at 11 am in different venues at the Kidwell-e Festival. The only problem was that nobody had turned up to listen to us. So we'd taken ourselves off to the bar and were drinking coffee when a festival organiser approached our table. We all looked up expectantly - although with different expectations I suspect.
'Liz Hinds?' she said.
'Yes,' I waved, expecting to be told, 'You can go home now.'
'You have an audience.'
No, actually she didn't say that. She said, 'You have one lady waiting to hear you speak; do you want to talk to her?'
'Yes!' I leapt up.
It turned out my audience was also a writer - and probably a better one than I - and we had a lovely long chat about writing and the difficulties. She told me about her work in progress, which sounded really exciting. I don't know if I helped her with her block but I threw a few suggestions at her, mainly, 'perhaps you should move.' Which was logical, trust me.
Even if the event had been well-attended, I was still an unknown author speaking first in the morning in competition with other better-known writers so I would have been happy with a very small audience.
I knew I should have taken Husband with me. He'd have doubled the crowd.
On the way back I lost the M4 but that's another story.
I gave my audience a copy of my book as she was a student and couldn't afford to buy it so as long as I don't end up out of pocket tonight I'll still be on to a winner.
3 comments:
These 3 posts on public speaking are bringing it all back to me! Public speaking is not my favourite thing to do although I can do it if I must. Good luck with your talk and I hope you have a good turnout!
That must be every minor author's secret dread - that they turn up to a meet-the-author event and there's an audience of one. They must be greatly relieved when not only is there a sizable audience but they have some intelligent and unusual questions.
There Are disadvantages to lanrge Audiences too.(2000). They Are Not illuminated only you are. So you can only see the First row. Cant distinguish questioner. Takes a while for their microphone to get passed
around else inaudible. Book signings take forever. Etc etc.
Post a Comment