Tag Archive for: Creative Colloquy

Practicing Being Brave

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by J.M. Phillippe

Last night I had the great joy of helping take over Creative Colloquy in Tacoma, Washington’s monthly open mic night with fellow Blue Zephyr Press authors Bethany Maines and Karen Harris Tully in order to celebrate the release of our newest collaborative effort, Galactic Dreams Volume 2.

I struggle a lot with public speaking. I have a theory that people tend to be better at either prepared presentations — creating a script and practicing it over and over again until they get it just right — or spontaneous presentations — getting the gist of an idea down in your head and then winging in more of an improvisation way. I developed this theory after taking an improv class in my 20s. It took a little while, but then I felt super comfortable getting up in front of others and making things up. But in that class we also had to prepare and perform a monologue. I had spent weeks being able to throw ideas out in front of this class of people and feeling comfortable with the idea of failing. But preparing something ahead of time gave me time to get nervous. Really nervous.

I thought of this again as I sat in the room waiting for my turn to read from my newest book, The Glitter of Gold. I had practiced reading it a few times. I know I have a tendency to talk fast (and read fast) due to years of being told that, so I had to sit and continue to take slow deep breaths to try to calm myself down.

And then I got up, and I started read. I’d like to say that I magically felt better and the words just flowed. Instead I kept losing my place on the page as I looked up at the crowd (something I was told was better than just keeping my head down and reading) and stumbling over words I’d read perfectly several times before. I found myself spontaneously rewriting sentences as I read, skipping words or changing the order for the sake of my poor twisted tongue, and I could feel sweat pooling on my upper lip.

I was fortunate enough to have family and friends come and support me, and I switched from face to face in the crowd, looking for a lifeline, and trying not to speed up as I got closer to the end of my prepared section.

When it was over, I was very happy to drop the paper down to my side, take my applause, say thank you, and get off the stage. It did not feel like a graceful exit.

And then my cousin told me later how proud he was of how brave I was — not just for reading in public, but for writing and putting my words out there for others to see. I of course started to tear up.

Both improvisation and presentation take bravery, and perhaps doing the one you are least comfortable with takes the most.

In the end, like anything else, they both take practice. Being brave takes practice.

And last night, my fellow authors and all the folks who participated in the open mic got a chance to practice being brave.

***



J.M. Phillippe is the author
of the novels Perfect
Likeness, Aurora One, The Christmas Spirit,
and The Glitter of Gold and the short stories The Sight and Plane Signals. She has lived in the
deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York
City. She works as a clinical social worker in Brooklyn, New York and spends
her free time binge-watching quality TV, drinking cider with amazing friends,
and learning the art of radical self-acceptance, one day at a time.
 

Food of Thoughts

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By Bethany Maines

Last weekend, I participated in a local author program
called Food for Thought.  Put on by the local
business district in partnership with a local literary group, CreativeColloquy, the program hosts different authors each week at a farmer’s market
for a minimal fee ($5).  These type of
events are great ways to connect with readers, brush up on my “elevator pitch”
for books, and see what’s resonating with the public.  The elevator pitch is essentially a one to
two sentence synopsis of a book.  And
with that many people visiting the booth, I can try out different versions and
wording to see what pitch makes people look interested in a book.  For my Carrie Mae Mysteries, slightly older
ladies resonate with “It’s the story of what would happen if Mary Kay ran an
international espionage organization.”  But
the younger women and men do better with “If James Bond was a woman.”  Even if I didn’t end up selling a good amount
of books, that kind of market research is pretty invaluable.  But, of course, being out in the public is
also a way to connect with the… um… unique individuals that walk among us.
My favorite unique person this last weekend was the
gentlemen who told us a series of stories about his experiences with ghosts
including some “Indians” because he had been staying at a house built on an “Indian
Burial Ground.”  The problem was that as
he meandered on about his experiences, the Native Americans he described
sounded straight on out of the movies, and lacked any resemblance to the actual
tribes that populate the area.  Not all
tribes wear “leathers” crazy face.  Our
tribes used capes woven from cedar bark and a type of fabric woven from the
hair of a now extinct type of dog.  <LEARN MORE HERE>  So…
try being more educated before doing drugs. Also, and not for nothing, if a
housing developer were to find human remains, archaeologists and police would
have to be called and the local tribes would claim the bodies.  Nobody wants to build on top of human remains
– they disintegrate, leaving cavities in the ground and make foundations
unstable.  It’s unsound construction, OK,
nut job?  And also, also, you’re scaring
people away from my booth.

But he’s just the tiny fly in the ointment. The majority of
people at such events are at minimum polite and usually excited about talking
to an actual author.  And in the end, talking to such enthusiastic readers and writers are what keep me coming back to
these type of events.  So if you see me
out and about, stop by to say hi.  Just
don’t tell me about your ghost experience… unless it’s historically accurate.
***
Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Wild Waters, Tales
from the City of Destiny and An
Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Reading vs. Writing

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by Bethany Maines

On Monday night fellow Stiletto
author J.M. Phillippe (visiting from Brooklyn) and I attended the local open
mic night from Creative Colloquy.  The
evening celebrated Creative Colloquy’s third anniversary and featured the
Washington State poet laureate Dr. Tod Marshall. Creative Colloquy’s mission is
to connect writers with their community and celebrate their works. And in
keeping with that mission, Dr. Marshall reminded us in the audience to both
battle for the arts and to rejoice in our creative communities. 
As with every time I
go to a reading event I’m struck by what different skills reading and writing
are. It’s difficult to differentiate the presentation from the work being
presented. For every rushed reading, there’s one that gives space for the
audience to savor the moment. For every mumbled poem, there’s one that echoes
from the rafters.  For every awkward and
misplaced laugh in the middle of a story, there’s one that ought to be a comedy
special.  Delivery, timing, and pronunciation,
all take a reading from blah to amazing. 
Or at least important enough to make people stop talking to their
friends at the table.  Are the amazing
readings better?  Or just benefitting
from better delivery?
It makes me wonder: what
could I be doing to present my own work better in live readings? Should we authors all be forced
to take public speaking classes? Improv classes? Should we be forced to listen
to recordings of ourselves (God nooooooooooo!!!)?  Is there a secret trick that I could be
using?  What if I just I hire an actor to
read for me?  In all probability I shall
simply have to rely on the very exclusive, top secret trick of practice and
repetition.  As long as no one makes me
watch a recording of it, that will probably be fine.

***

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Wild Waters, Tales
from the City of Destiny and An
Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

The Myth of the Lone Writer

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by J.M. Phillippe

Anyone who tells you that writing is a solitary activity is telling tales. Even ignoring the number of published authors who are actually writing teams (such as The Stiletto Gang’s own Sparkle Abbey), and others who use ghost writers, no writer I have ever met has ever been published without a high level of support from an entire team of people. That support usually starts with other writers — people who share the insane desire to try to create worlds out of words for others to play in.

I first met members of my personal writing support team at Western Washington University, where I took my first steps toward becoming a writer. Coming back to Washington still feels like coming home for me, and I feel more strongly tied in to the writing communities out here than in either of my other two homes (Los Angeles, CA and Brooklyn, NY).

Tod Marshall read poems in honor of Spring
 in between scheduled readers.

So I was more than happy to go with fellow Blue Zephyr Press author (and The Stiletto Gang blogger) Bethany Maines to the Creative Colloquy Third Anniversary Party in Tacoma, WA. With special guest MC Tod Marshall, the Washington State Poet Laureate, the event boasted five scheduled guest readers (all published in the Creative Colloquy literary magazine, either online or in print), and an open mic that offered a chance for others to share their work as well. Authors read to a packed house at the B Sharp Coffee Shop, and prizes were given out to audience members via raffle tickets throughout the course of the evening. (I, sadly, did not win anything.)

What I noticed most about the gathering was how many readers had teams of support with them. It seemed to me that not a single writer was there alone. And if they started off the night alone, the act of sharing their work to the group suddenly made them seem less so, as others congratulated them for reading, for having the nerve to stand up and share their words in a public space.

It was a pretty, and pretty public, space.

Being there with someone from my own support network made it all the more obvious that writing is rarely the loner activity it’s often portrayed as being. During my week visit, I had countless conversations with Bethany and others in my writing group and extended reading network about my latest writing project (a contemporary fantasy series based on a short story I wrote for a contest last year) that shaped the world I was creating. We got to spend rare time together writing in the same space, making use of the ability to use an auxiliary brain to track down words we couldn’t quite remember, being inspired by the steady clicking of the computer next to us, and generally enjoying the company of someone who gets it when you say that your characters aren’t cooperating. All of this was before we even shared the actual works themselves, a process that begins with beta readers, and, basically, never ends. Even after a work is published, it still takes other people — namely an audience — to bring it to life.

I don’t often get time to go to readings or literary events, and so I am not often reminded of just how many of us writers — and people willing to support us — there are. You’d think I’d feel intimidated, but whenever I am in a space like that, I just feel excited and proud to be part of the community around me. I’m always just so happy to know that I’m not alone in the struggle, and in the celebration, of writing.

***

J.M. Phillippe is the author of Perfect Likeness and the short story The Sight. She has lived in the deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York City. She works as a family therapist in Brooklyn, New York and spends her free-time decorating her tiny apartment to her cat Oscar Wilde’s liking, drinking cider at her favorite British-style pub, and training to be the next Karate Kid, one wax-on at a time.