Well, I’m happy to report that my first reading didn’t completely bomb. I was a little nervous going into it seeing as I’d never done one before despite being a writer for many years.
I wound up going second to last in the randomly-selected lineup so unfortunately the crowd had thinned out a bit, but other than that I’m reasonably happy with how things went. I don’t mind performing toward the end of a lineup since people often remember the last act they see better than the first, but it would have been nice if more people had stuck around. From the comments I heard those who did hear my reading for the most part enjoyed it and were glad they had stayed.
The main mistake I made was picking a selection that was a little too long, so I wound up reading faster than I would have liked to fit it into the time allotted. Of course, that’s because I didn’t get around to sitting down and figuring out how long it would take to read the section aloud ahead of time and I’ll be sure be better prepared in the future. I figured it was just a couple of pages and would go pretty quickly, but I had forgotten how long reading even a short piece can take. For my next reading I’ll either be picking a shorter section or doing some abridging so that I can take my time reading rather than feeling like I need to rush through the piece.
Thanks to all of you who managed to make it out to Ginkgo last night and stuck around to hear me read. As always, your support is much appreciated. I’ll be continuing to announce upcoming events here as I schedule them. I also want to especially thank my cover artist Courie Bishop who got me out there to do it in the first place.
S C O T T M I C H A E L S T E N W I C K 