Of Black Shirts and Steve Jobs’ Sneakers
I’m a bit down today. Every time I turn on an electronic device Steve Jobs stares back at me from the Apple Website. His image is in black and white but his effect is one of bright color and explosive genius.
How can a man as talented and creative as he was be gone? It is such a simple question and answer – because he is.
I have been an Apple fan since the first Macintosh. I wrote my first book on it. The book wasn’t very good but the computer was amazing. I was using a Smith Corona electric typewriter just moments before and then all of a sudden on that small black and white screen everything changed.
I have had an Apple ever since – over twenty years – though as my eyesight has gotten worse I really appreciate the much larger iMac screen that I write this on. I had the first Apple laptop. I bought an iPod. I bought an iPhone. I bought an iPad. Even if I didn’t buy the first iteration because I didn’t have the money I have always gotten my money’s worth and then some. My day job work is on a PC but my writing has for twenty plus years been on a Mac. I feel like there is a neurochemical link between the two of us.
I look at the picture of Steve Jobs and realize how important this man with the glasses and short hair and black shirt and sneakers has been to my creative writing life. One has grown with the other. This year my debut novel is published and Steve Jobs has died. I never met him but I live with his legacy. I will miss those talks he gave to introduce the next Apple big thing. I will miss thinking that something coming out of Apple would always be another big, life changing, thing.
Cue the Music and Coldplay
Check out my guest post on Lady Reader’s Bookstuff blog for Amy Della Rossa. It’s all about the music in the words and the music in my head… or in your head.
Here’s the link: Lady Reader’s Bookstuff
Of Grant Monsters and Historical Societies
I’m presenting/lecturing/reading at the Queens Historical Society tomorrow evening. This is cool. I wrote a historical novel that takes place in Queens and Manhattan and the Queens Historical Society asks me to come speak at their author lecture/reading series. I’m pretty excited about it. I better get drressed up.
But first I have to finish my grant application for my day job. It’s due this afternoon at 12pm which means it must be finished by 10 so it can go out at 11 to be hand delivered. I have one more line to cut. It’s a different kind of writing, grant writing. It’s not very pleasant but it’s a skill that helps my fiction writing so I do it. Oh yeah, and it helps me keep my day job. And I can’t give it up yet. So I cut one line. Sounds easy until you see you’ve cut everywhere else after reading it over and over the day before into the night. But I digress a bit.
I’ve never been to the Queens Historical Society. I don’t know who will be there or what kinds of questions I’ll get but it will be different. I’m going to speak about the creation of Cid, the protagonist of Open Wounds, and how he came into being. He’s from Sunnyside, only two towns – about 30 minutes walk – from where I live in Jackson Heights. The 7 train takes you there in five minutes. The 7 also takes Cid in to Manhattan to see Captain Blood on his first day of freedom.
The reading runs from 6:30-8pm. Here’s the address of the Society:
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Weeping Beech Park
143-135 37th Avenue
Flushing, NY 11354 |
Why the Point is Quicker than the Edge
I’ve still got three questions to answer from CWPost. I’ll get to them. I promise.
But a birthday today got in the way, as did a grant proposal that I have to write for my day job in order to stay employed and keep my staff employed. So it’s important. And it takes up all my time for a few days – driving my anxiety up and me near into madness. Well… you get the picture.
So last week I did a fencing workshop/reading/Q&A at the Flushing Library with my friend actor/stage combatant/fencer Dave Brown. Dave’s the best because he does these things for me for no other reason than I ask him (and I take him out ot dinner). He is an extraordinary friend. We get to fence in front of an audience – and he’s the best fencing partner – totally trustworthy and only once in our time as fencing partners has he every hit me by mistake. Hah.
At the reading there were three kids who had read my book and who actually helped me give the synopsis of Open Wounds. That was the first time I’ve had people in the audience who’d read the book. Morya Haughton, the most excellent YA Librarian who invited me and rounded up the kids for the event, told me the library had six copies of my book and it was in constant rotation… and rarely on the shelves. That pretty much made my day.
So there were twenty some odd kids at the event and I didn’t know any of them and that was cool. They liked the swordplay – who wouldn’t and most of them stayed an extra 45 minutes after the event was over to handle the swords and ask questions about writing and fencing. Dave and I had a blast.
One young woman asked a question that really got to me. She was one of the people who had read the book. “Why is someone like Maddie (Cid’s grandmother) who believes in God, so cruel to Cid?” I had to stop a moment just to let that one sink in. My answer was pretty simple. “Because she is. Just because someone believes in God doesn’t mean they can’t also be cruel. It just works that way sometimes. It’s not pleasant but it’s true.” She nodded and looked away. It made me wonder what the question behind the question for her was.
I think human beings are complex and rarely all good or evil – usually a mixture of both to different degrees. Mad Maddie Wymann is like that. You know little of her past but it must have been bitter to turn her into the person she is. And when her son, Cid’s father, disappears, she grieves for him.
When she is lost, Cid grieves for her because she is all he has.
So it goes.
Flushing Library
I’m doing a lecture/reading/Q&A at the Queens Historical Society this Thursday. Let’s see what questions I get there.
Anxiety is Your Friend
Question number 3.
How do you deal with presentation anxiety? And how did you get over your fear?
Okay. Here’s one I actually have some expertise on. I know a lot about anxiety. You could say I’m an expert on it. I’ve lived with an anxiety disorder most of my life and in spite of this have performed as a reader, an actor, and a teacher in front of thousands of individuals over the last twenty years – and I’ve taught public speaking classes to just almost as many individuals.
The woman who asked this question had taken speech class and still had tremendous anxiety when she presented in class. I told her, “Welcome to the club.” The old stat from The Book of Lists is that people are more afraid of public speaking than death, taxes, divorce, and marriage. So If you’re scared of it you’re in the right spot.
So, to the first part of the question. Am I over my fear of public speaking? Yes and no. I still have some but I’d frame it as anxiety. Some days it’s higher and some days it’s lower but I am almost always anxious before events, the bigger the event the more anxious I am. But it’s normal anxiety – what you are supposed to have in situations like this – not overwhelming. And… the anxiety is much more manageable and that is why I can function and succeed with it. And yes, I even enjoy it (the public speaking not the anxiety – though we are friendly and exchange birthday cards).
What I did was do a lot of public speaking.
I practiced and practiced in my jobs. I liked teaching so I taught in all the different jobs I had. I watched other speakers and took techniques I liked, tried to avoid ones that I thought didn’t work.
I also took improvisational acting classes and found these to be tremendously helpful in building my confidence in my ability to deal with brain freeze (when you can’t think of what to say and stand there with your mind blank like you just drank a 7/11 slurpee way too fast) and in realizing there are many ways to get from point A to point B (ie: I don’t have to be perfect in what I say – I just have to get my point across). I will also say that taking acting classes and specifically improv classes helped me as a writer to see how ideas can be generated and grown very quickly with a minimum of effort. It also helped me to learn about character archetypes and how a 3-act narrative structure works.
I also swear by yogic breathing practices (pranayama), meditation, and asana (physical practice). I’ve practiced daily for the last five years and have been studying actively for fifteen. It has been the single most powerful collection of tools I’ve found to help me deal with life in general and anxiety in the specific.
Books to look at on public speaking:
The Exceptional Presenter (the best accessible, practical, and hands on resource I’ve found so far)
Public Speaking for Dummies (hey, don’t laugh, it’s a good resource!)
Lunievicz 