When a Writer Must Speak Instead of Write

In order to work, writers need solitude, and they need to be comfortable with it.  My guess is that most writers tend to be introverts who are more comfortable alone than in large groups.  Introverts are also uncomfortable with public speaking.  Ironically, actors can be either introverted or extroverted.  Their personal characteristics do not necessarily affect their professional work.  I am a total introvert.

In high school, to prepare myself for the wider world, I took a speech class my senior year.  My English teachers also recruited me to compete in a storytelling contest in which I progressed to the state finals.  During my adult work life, I’ve had jobs in which I needed to speak well, whether in meetings or at sales conferences.  I was not required, however, to give speeches or presentations on my work.  That is a totally new experience for me.

My presentation last Saturday at the Minnesota Mensa Regional Gathering on material from the memoir I’m working on, The Successful Patient, went far better than I anticipated.  I presented to a full room of attentive and engaged people.  Their attentiveness reassured me.  The slides were in the correct order and worked on the laptop.  The Q&A discussion brought good questions, additional suggestions for patients to be successful in taking care of themselves, and excellent comments.  The feedback continued for the rest of the day and even into this past week — all positive.  You’d think I’d be ecstatic, right?  But….

My first issue, of course, was my jangled nerves.  I could do with a lot less of them.  I’ve been thinking all week about how to stop the nerves and came to the realization that for me, the nervousness is about my lack of self-confidence.  Once I’ve done more successful public speaking, my self-confidence will increase and the nerves, I hope, will decrease.  Then I won’t knock over my glass of water as I did last Saturday, and won’t need to take Imodium twice before the presentation.  I’ve been thinking about what I did right, and what I could do better in the future:

• Practice, practice, practice.  I rehearsed my presentation over and over, adding, subtracting, doing it a little different each time.  I knew what I wanted to say in the introduction, for each slide, and for my conclusion.  I had practiced it so much that my nervousness could not make me blank out.
• Remember your intent/purpose.  I wanted to share information and experiences that I believed could be helpful to others.  This was really important to me and motivated my presentation.
• The audience wants to hear what I have to say — or they would not have taken the time to attend the presentation.  It helped to have friends in the audience, and a champion who smiled every time I looked at her, but it also helped to look at each person’s face, to see their concentration, their interest.  It’s hard to look at the audience, but it is an essential way to include them.  I’m glad I did it.
• Have alone time before the presentation.  I didn’t know I needed this until I was there and had no time to quiet my mind, ground myself, and focus.  Everyone I know who performs always takes time alone before starting the performance.  I need to keep that in mind for the future.
• There’s usually at least one person who wants to take you off topic.  Last Saturday, she sat right in the front row, and she wanted to talk about medical insurance which I had not included in my presentation.  I listened to her, then explained to the room that I wouldn’t be talking about medical insurance — a huge topic that deserved it’s own presentation.  She came back at me a little later, and I repeated what I’d said earlier.  When I talked about patients needing to be curious and to ask questions, I motioned to that woman in the front row, to let her know that it was a good thing to ask questions, even if I was not going off topic to answer them.

What pleased me the most after it was all over?  I saw people take their answer sheets with them.  They’d written notes they wanted to keep.  I’d given them information they could use.  I had fulfilled my purpose for doing that presentation……

More Next Week…..

I leave early this afternoon to attend a conference at which I’ll be giving a presentation.  My nerves are a mess.  Public speaking is not my favorite thing to do although I’ve done my share of it in the past.  The presentation is an important one, however, based on material I’ll be using in my memoir about being a successful patient.

As a result of this commitment, I won’t be posting here tomorrow as I usually do.  Perhaps I will collect ideas at the conference for future posts here…we’ll see.  I just need to get control of my nerves!

More next week…..

More Learning to Do….

Tomorrow, I will once again be at The Loft Literary Center attending a writing class about memoir.  A question came up recently among writer friends I know on Facebook about creative writing programs, i.e. Masters programs.  Are there too many, turning out way too many writers who have not lived life?  Have you ever faced the choice between getting a Masters or gaining life experience?

I thoroughly enjoy taking writing classes every once in a while.  I find them especially helpful when I’m stuck in some way.  They can break the log jam, spark new ideas, and get the writing flowing again.  I earned a BA in Music in college and was so finished with school upon graduation, I did not even consider graduate school.  At least not in America.  I moved to Vienna, Austria, and began the process to enter the University of Vienna to study German.  At that time, I had not yet begun to take my writing seriously.  I returned to the US, however, and then began taking my writing seriously.

Over the years, I’ve probably taken enough classes, workshops, and seminars to equal the coursework for a Masters.  I studied what interested me at that time — personal essay, journal writing, screenwriting, fiction, etc.  I considered occasionally the option of entering graduate school to obtain a Masters in creative writing, but could not stomach being a student in a classroom again under those circumstances.  I have consistently chosen to gain life experience.

What do writers usually write about?  Life.  Even in genre writing, the focus is on the human condition and how people live their lives.  If you’re in college reading this, consider taking a few years to just live after you graduate — work at an interesting job, travel, fall in love, volunteer in a hospital, follow your intuition.  Keep a journal — daily, if possible.  Exercise your writing muscles there, honing your skill at description, dialogue, recording dialects, and characterization.  Eavesdrop shamelessly, but not for content.  Eavesdrop to hear the music in the language, the accents, the way people mangle syntax in speech, what makes an individual’s speech so unique.  Work at strange jobs, if that’s your interest.  But experience life as fully as you can while keeping it legal, please.  You can always return to the notion of getting a graduate degree.

So, tomorrow, I’m taking a break from working on the presentation related to my memoir project, and I’m going to a memoir class to, I hope, spark more ideas for writing my memoir.  Last week’s class reassured me.  I want this week’s to light a firecracker under my imagination.  And I’m thinking that after tomorrow, I probably won’t need anymore writing classes for a while…..

What’s in a Writer’s Name?

A person takes on an alternate name for reasons both legal and illegal.  I’m talking about the alias or for writer’s pen name, also known by its French nom de plume.  Criminals adopt aliases, of course, to elude capture.  Spies acquire covers or legends that include one or more alternate identities.  They are hiding their true identity and nationality to protect themselves and their mission.  Celebrities adopt an alias or change their names outright because their given name is too plain or is already in use by another celebrity.  Norma Jean Baker became Marilyn Monroe.  Celebrities change their names to stand out from the crowd.

A writer adopted a pen name in the past to hide true identity.  Women writers took male names in order to achieve publication of their work.  Upper class writers or royalty took on pen names to hide their class.  Sometimes a writer whose day job was totally different from the arts, say a nuclear physicist, would write fiction under a pen name to hide from his employer and co-workers what he was doing on his own time.  While all those reasons may still exist, the most common reason in the 21st century involves marketing and sales.

A writer I know published a successful mystery series under his real name.  His family name began with “Z” and his books were then shelved in stores at the back of the fiction or mystery section.  He learned that book shoppers tend to begin their browsing at the beginning of the alphabet; therefore, when he decided to launch a series of historical novels, he listened to his publisher’s marketing staff and he adopted a pen name whose family name began with “A.”  They believed he’d sell more books if shelved at the front of the fiction section.  I have not heard from him if it made a difference in the sales figures for his novels, but I know he’s doing all right.

Let’s be clear: a pen name is not a legal name change.  It is an alias.  The writer I know does book signings as his alias, which usually cracks me up.  I’ve known him for years and know that outside of books, he still exists and does business under his legal name beginning with “Z.”  But when he’s signing books written under his pen name, he signs his pen name.

Years ago, I decided that I would write fiction under my legal name, and write nonfiction under a pen name.  The pen name I chose back then was unusual and I felt uncomfortable with it.  I phased it out of use — fortunately, I hadn’t been using it long.  For several years I wrote everything under my legal name.  Then, in the last 2-3 years, I’ve decided to write nonfiction as well as fiction books.  I want to keep them separate, both for readers and for my record-keeping.  How to choose this pen name?

As I did with the first one, I decided to simply translate my family name.  Yager is an Americanized spelling of Jaeger, the German noun for hunter.  Obviously, my German ancestors were hunters.  So, the last name of my pen name is Hunter.  The first name was more of a challenge.  I actually went to the Social Security Administration’s website section about names to do my research.  There, I could type in the year and up came a list of the most popular baby names for that year.  I chose 3-4 different years and picked names from each that I narrowed down to three.  These three names I put to a vote on Facebook.  The winning name became the first name of my pen name: Gina.  Under Gina Hunter, I started a commentary blog that now also covers subjects relevant to patients in support of the nonfiction book I’m working on under the pen name.

I like this pen name.  It suits me and the writing I’ll be doing under it.  For whatever reason you decide to use a pen name, I suggest choosing that name with care, and for long term use.  Your alias may turn out to be just as successful as you!