Bookish
The book fair is over, but I'm still determined to pass along those anecdotes and bits of wisdom I gleaned from the sixteen writers whose presentations I attended. I found them interesting, but your mileage may, of course, vary.
I wonder if shy writers simply refuse to tour? All of the authors I saw ranged from competent to extremely entertaining in terms of their speaking style. Some were dryly witty, such as Margaret Atwood, while others could easily move to doing stand-up, as was the case with Jennifer Weiner [weblog]. Some were clearly more comfortable fielding audience questions than reading from their work, such as Maureen Dowd. Terry McMillan was tremendously funny, both in her reading and in her Q&A session, but she was constantly fidgeting at the podium, so perhaps she was more uncomfortable than it might appear. And predictably, the TV star authors were perfectly at home in front of an audience.
Authors are stereotypically described as introverted, to the point where "shy and bookish" is a cliche. In my own experience I find that while writing is a solitary activity, the more I write the more I crave social interaction. I know several writers visit Hidden City; what do you think? If you are too shy to comment publicly, send a message to mkhall at gmail dot-com.
2 Comments:
I think anyone who writes and publishes a book (or a blog or what-have-you) does so because he/she has something to communicate to the people reading it. As such, it's probably not at all unusual for some of them to crave feedback from those readers. At the same time, I suppose, the book is a very one-way form of communication, so people who have something to say but who don't necessarily want to actually talk to anyone probably find it to be a good medium.
I've met a lot of writers in the SF/Fantasy/Horror genres and most are quite personable, even chatty. However, getting up in front of a crowd to basically tell them all how fantastic you are and how wonderful you books is would be a heartstopper for most people.
Writers are just people, too, like anyone else, and they come with the same kinds of feelings most of us have -- many develop a public persona they put on when they stand up, others just toil through the seminar stuff and prefer the relative quiet of one-on-one autographing (which is still some hard work) or more personal meetings with fans. I suspect some suffer through what their publisher or agent makes them do and then just head home, not because they are "shy and bookish" but because performing for a crowd (and that's what public speaking is) is very draining, even for those with a temperament for it. And some authors just do better down at the bar.
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