Monday, October 22, 2007

The Writer in Public

Tonight I am attending a poetry reading with a writer friend of mine. We have gone together once before (she goes often but I seldom join her) and it was a positive experience for me. The audience was kind and I didn't get a "your stuff sucks" vibe. Everyone just read and enjoyed each other. Somehow, though, the whole thing feels wrong to me. It's not a requirement that writers be recluses but it seems a good many of us are, at the very least, shy and introverted. We sit at home and type our messages to the world on laptops or typewriters, or scrawl them out on sheets of paper or napkins at coffee shops.

Something about reading my work aloud unnerves me, especially since the work that I think most highly of is very personal.

1 comment:

colleen said...

My writer's group has been hosting spoken word nights for two years now. I still get nervous but not like I used to. What I've been thinking about lately is how an artist can sell a painting but people hardly ever buy a poem.