A Ramble About Reading (the Act Of, not The Place)
I have read my work aloud, all told, once in the last five years. It was last Christmas, at a Parthian event in a lovely little tent at the back of a cafe in Cardiff. I didn’t know anybody there – which, actually, was the optimum scenario, really – and I was shaking like the proverbial-yet-deceased Polaroid picture. My voice wandered, and the version of my novel Hereditation that I was reading from was a years-old draft, still going through the proofing/rewriting process. I spent hours (no joke) editing a chunk of the book together into a ten minute chunk that I hoped was a) funny and b) intriguing enough that people might want to read the book. Whether it was or not, I don’t know; that’s not the point. The point was, I’m going to have to do this a whole lot more.
Reading at events to publicise the book is a strange thought. You’re standing up and just pitching a chunk of a book that might not be to everybody’s tastes, and you’re forcing them to listen to you until you’re finished. Look at whatever launch readings might occur for this here BYT project; there’s four vastly different books here, in different genres, and the chances of us appealing to the same audience members are slim-to-none. My own book is a very very black tragi-comic dramady (SUB-GENRE OVERLOAD!); the readers who might love the other BYT books might hate that idea. Hell, the other writers might hate it, frankly. But they’ll all sit there and listen to me as I read extracts from chapter 5 and 17 (because I’m not starting with the rather slow-burning open, frankly). The other writers? If all goes to plan and we do a chaffton of readings over the next few months, I’ll have heard their extracts over and over. By the end of the publicity run for these books, I’ll probably be able to quote them. [And aside, and a mental note to the other BYTs: we should swap books at a reading, pretend to be the others. Bagsy not playing Susie.]
The thought of these readings, at the moment, terrifies me. I’m used to presenting my work to others by now, used to telling people to read something. I know where my strengths lie (novel-length works of fiction) and where they don’t (almost everything else) and, unfortunately, I suspect that I’ll find a hard time of it on the stoop (as t’were). I lie in bed and think about what’s to come – about standing there at a podium, or maybe not, maybe just in a room full of eager/bored/listless faces – and I sweat. Unpleasant, sure, but true. It’s a curious thing, as I used to be in a comedy show on a stage, and I teach Creative Writing, giving lectures(ish) to classes of people, but there’s something far more personal about reading my fiction that I just can’t keep under control. I cannot control people’s reaction to the chunks of the reading, either; I give them small sections, they take what they want from those. If they aren’t something that teases them towards reading more, I could be pickled; or, alternatively, that could very well be for the best. (I’m not going to be reading the darkest bits for people who don’t know me, am I? If somebody doesn’t like what I do read, they aren’t going to like some of the more unpleasant situations that jaunt along as the book progresses.)
[Incidentally, another aside: I have somehow made my novel sound like the written equivalent of a Saw film. It is not torture porn. It's slightly strange, slightly twisted lit-fic. Not torture porn; lit-fic.]
And the questions! I went to a reading the other night in Cardiff, and the questions asked by the audience were, as always, unbearably evil!
How do you get your inspiration?
How do you actually write?
What advice do you have in this age of THE INTERNET?
and, the worst of all:
Is your writing based on real events/people/stuff?
It’s this last question that’s the most heinous, of course, because it’s always assumed that writers can only write what they know, write from their own experience. I suspect that this might be the most terrifying thing for me with regards to readings, because my novel features both events that I have never encountered, and a message that hasn’t actually been informed by my own life. When I’m reading aloud about affairs, about prostitution, infanticide, race, drug addiction, about murder, I’m petrified that the audience might assume that I know anything of these things. When I read the racist/sexist/slightly sexually pervy opinions of characters, I worry that an audience might transfer those opinions to my own mindset. As I read those motivations aloud, I actually worry about these things. I am, by any normal measure, a bit of a wreck, really.
Though, of course, you won’t see that, with any luck. With any luck I’ll mask my terror with sly grins, my sweat with antiperspirant, my shakes with a drink in my hand or a fumble of the lip of a podium. With any luck I’ll sleep the night before and be full of the joys pre-reading, and I’ll listen to the great writing coming from those around me and it’ll bloster my confidence, and you – the audience – will leave with signed book in hand, saying, “What a nice, confident and articulate young man.”
I have read my work aloud only once in the last five years. By the end of 2010 I’m hoping to have that number multiplied by a factor of [a big number], and I’m hoping that, by the end of it, I’ll find it all a damned sight easier.
