Reading in Public

and other unsavory habits.

Last night I had the privilege and honor to read one of my published stories (The Deal, from McGill University's Scrivener Creative Review) at Art2Art7, a wonderful gathering of authors, singers, sculptors and other artists and their fans. The reading went surprisingly well, considering the extensive collection of exotic butterflies pinned between my esophagus and my duodenum. Apparently my bad haircut acquired the day before the event distracted the crowd's attention from my shaking legs, or else everyone was too kind to say anything.

Public reading is like any other form of public speaking, however, and here my arbitrarily-many years of middle management stood me in good stead. Even without PowerPoint running on a projector, the same rules apply, so here's my version of Public Speaking Tips for Authors (no dummies here):

Know your material. Don't expect to read something you wrote two years ago without reviewing it first, or you're going to miss the dramatic pause points and trip over your own fancy turns of phrase. Go through the whole piece, out loud, and find the places where you might need to change or eliminate a word or two to smooth the verbal flow. (This is good advice at any point in the editing process, by the way.) This reading at home is the place to find out if you're over (or, less likely, under) your alloted time. You may want to change your margins or line breaks in order to insure that you're not flipping over a page in the middle of a climactic sentence, breaking the spell.

Slow Down. Everyone reads too fast to begin with, and when you're nervous you read even faster. Force yourself to slow down. Put a big black mark every so often on your manuscript to remind yourself to take pauses. (Don't type the word PAUSE, though. You'll end up reading it. Trust me on this one.)

And finally, Look at the Audience. Sure, unless you've memorized your piece you'll be reading from a sheet of paper, but that doesn't mean you ALWAYS have to be staring down at your hands or the podium. At dramatic pauses, look up and out at someone -- anyone -- make eye contact. Scan the crowd briefly while you're turning pages. Smile when the crowd is laughing, even when they're laughing at the wrong places. You're there to make a connection, and your voice is only one of the tools at your disposal. They want you to have a great reading, and seeing that in your audience will make you a better reader.

Reading. For all the definitions of the word, it's why we write.