One of the things that I do as a writer, something I simultaneously love AND hate, is live readings. While it’s a wonderful experience to share your work with an appreciative audience, at the same time, I spend days beforehand worrying and stressing about it. What will I read? How long do I have? What if someone reads something similar to me right before it’s my turn? Also, I write some pretty dark stuff and I always have to preface a live reading with “this is fiction” or “my parents are really lovely people” or “I have never killed anyone…that I’m aware of” or “Why are there small children here?!” I’ve had a couple of really awful readings in the past, like the time that I was invited to an online poetry reading. I don’t usually read my own poetry and don’t consider myself a poet, but I DID have a poem that I was quite proud of. It was about the nature of time, and how doing something kind in the moment led me to avoid getting hit by a deer on the road later by about 10 seconds, the same 10 seconds I didn’t take to think about being kind earlier. But then the person before me told the audience a horribly tragic story about a family member who’d been hit and killed in a deer/car accident, which left me scrambling for another poem to read. And then there was the time that I was invited to a reading and wasn’t told until I got there that the theme was love. And I was like, have you even read ANY of my work? Because most of my writing is VERY dark. I didn’t feel too bad though, because the woman before me read a story where the two “lovers” are murdered in a very gory way by a vengeful ghost, and it made my selection seem tame by comparison. Then last weekend, I was at a horror writing conference and I was asked to read. “Perfect,” I thought. “Finally an audience who can appreciate some of my darker stories.” So I picked a couple of short stories that I NEVER read aloud because they are VERY violent. I got up to the podium and began. When I got to a particularly gruesome point in the story, I looked at the audience and stopped reading. “Wow,” I said. “I’d forgotten how nasty this was.” Everybody laughed, but it was that kind of uncomfortable laughter where you want to be supportive of the person who’s just bombing. I’m pretty sure that was all in my head, because when I’d finished the second piece, there was a lot of applause and some people came to buy my book. But still. I guess the problem is that I tend to overthink things. I mean, if you ask me to do a reading, you should know ahead of time exactly what you’re in for.
The last two readings I’ve done though, have been from my humour collection. I didn’t think anyone but me would GET me, but apparently they do, and both times, instead of having to apologize in advance, I just read and people laugh ( and buy even more of my books). Which made me realize that my audiences ARE responding appropriately. They laugh when I’m funny, and scream and cry when I’m scary. Mission accomplished.
The other thing I did this week was (almost finish) my new miniature dining room. I don’t know why I love doing these things so much, and I don’t know whether it’s going to lead to me being a full-blown dollhouse person, but it makes me happy. And here’s a challenge–take a look at the room and if you can identify the one thing that’s still missing (because remember, I said “almost finished”), that will cement you as one of the people who know me the best (Anonymole, I’m looking at you), and I will name a character in my next murder story after you.
Also, the other day, I yelled at a crow. Why? Because it wouldn’t stop cawing and I was trying to write. So I went to the door, opened it, and yelled, “Shut the f*ck up, would you?!” And the crow stopped cawing. Another mission accomplished. And that dead mouse on my porch? Who knows where it came from…
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