(Jessica Anya Blau, Amber Tamblyn, Justin Taylor, Stacie Williams, Adam Wilson) Four authors discuss what they've learned from their time on the road. Sharing experiences from their most memorable events, whether reading to a crowd of three or three hundred, participating in a nudist colony, book club discussion, poetry readings, or a dramatic performance, these authors will reinforce the importance of having an engaging and personal experience regardless of audience size, venue, or awareness.

Published Date: July 1, 2015

Transcription

Speaker 1 (00:00:04):

Welcome to the A W P Podcast series. This event was recorded at the 2015 A W P conference in Minneapolis. The recording features Jessica Anya Blau, Amber Tamlin, Justin Taylor, and Adam Wilson. You will now hear Stacy Williams provide introductions.

Speaker 2 (00:00:32):

So just to get started, my name is Stacy Williams. I'm a former bookseller author, events manager, 250 events a year at a large bookstore in the Midwest. So I'm sort of guiding their conversation to make sure they stay somewhat on track because that's what I've done for a lot of years is wrangle authors into making, this is the panel on Catherine Hegel films, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the one. Just double checking. You're playing Catherine Heigle, I think. Great. Good. Yeah, we've determined that previously we thought also about making this just a giant dance party, bring in beer and naked, that's what all the emails said. Yeah, we had this great email chain. We have a plotted movie and everything. It's fantastic. So you guys just get the boring version. We were out late drinking. So in 2011, the Onion published this really great article which made the rounds, at least in the book world with booksellers and some authors. The title being author promoting book gives it her all, whether it's just three people or a crowd of nine people.

Speaker 2 (00:01:29):

And I feel like we could just read the article and it would give you everything you need to know because she talks about it's best to set your expectations lower and be pleasantly surprised when almost half a row is filled. She talks about it's nice to get up close with people and be able to look them in the eye, and when it's this vast sea of faces, it doesn't feel like you're even talking to people at all. So I think that this is a good capturing of what we're trying to address. So let me introduce you to our panelists really quick. Collectively, their work has appeared in basically every publication that exists in terms of literary and journalistic work, so I'm not even going to bother giving you that list. So over here on the far left, we have Jessica Anya Lau. She's the author of three novels, summer of Naked Swim Parties, drinking Closer to Home and The Wonder Bread Summer Being Naked is a trending topic with Jessica, as you'll find out a little bit later.

Speaker 2 (00:02:18):

Next to her is Amber Tamlin. Amber has been a contributing writer for the Poetry Foundation. She's author of three collections of Poetry, free Stallion, bang, ditto, and most recently Dark Sparkler, which is, oh my goodness, it will just kind of dig itself into your heart. It's great. She claims she used to be an actress, but we're not sure. She may also see Ashton Crutcher's nipples. We're not sure about that either. We kind of doubt everything that comes out of her mouth next to her. We have Justin Taylor. He's the author of a novel, the Gospel of Anarchy, two story Collections, everything here is the Best thing Ever, and Flings, he once almost got arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor because he was using his friend's older brother's Id to go out drinking. That's true. It's a great story. You can read about it in details. Adam Wilson is author of Flat Screen and what's important here is feeling. He teaches creative writing at N Y U Columbia, the Sackett Street Writers Workshop, and occasionally on the subway. He was a bookseller and a former life. His website claims Brooklyn Magazine named him as one of the 50 funniest people in Brooklyn and he just got engaged about a week or two ago. So yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:03:22):

I'm not funny anymore.

Speaker 2 (00:03:27):

Don't forget to speak on the microphone.

Speaker 3 (00:03:28):

Oh yeah, I'm not funny anymore.

Speaker 2 (00:03:31):

So in writing programs, professors tell you over and over that to be a good writer you need to read a lot of books. I'd argue that in order to know how to have a good author appearance, you need to attend a lot of author events. So why don't you guys first give us your first author event experience as an attendee as opposed to as an author? Oh boy.

Speaker 3 (00:03:50):

I actually have a good story about this one. When I was about, I'd say nine years old, my dad took me to a John Updyke reading and I think because he was reading something about baseball and I liked baseball and my dad was a writer and he had just started publishing his own first stories and he was working on his first novel and he was very excited to introduce nine year old me to John Updyke. And we went up to him after and got the book signed and my dad said, we both, I'm a writer as well, I just had a story in the New Yorker and you have stories in the New Yorker. And he's like, what are you doing now? My dad's like, well, I'm working on my first novel, and John Updyke turns to nine year old me and he goes, are you working on a novel also? And it was a really dick move and what

Speaker 4 (00:04:40):

An asshole.

Speaker 3 (00:04:41):

Yeah, he was a prick. And that's my story of the first reading I went to.

Speaker 5 (00:04:46):

I

Speaker 4 (00:04:50):

Mean, I used to take my kids to readings. Oh, I'll tell you the best one I went to is I went to a Tobias Wolf reading and I had my baby and she was like this manic baby. My first one was easy and the second one was manic and she nursed constantly and whenever people were around, that's when she'd want to nurse and she was just like's like audibly sucking the entire time he read. And so my breast was out and it was just the whole time that he read and afterwards it was big. He left where he read and he walked straight back to me in the back row and he said, how old's your baby? And he talked to me and then he walked me to my car. He was such a nice guy. So it was sweet.

Speaker 5 (00:05:31):

My parents also had no sense of what was appropriate for a child. And so when I was about 10 years old, I got really into Stephen King and between 10 and 12 read all of the ex extent Stephen King, what was ex extent at that time. And so I think I would say the first memory I have is I grew up in South Florida and we went to the Miami International Book Fair. He was going to be signing books there. We waited in a line for a very long time and he signed, I had a book and my grandma had a book that we both got our book signed, and that was when he was playing with the rock bottom, if you guys remember them, the all writer rock band, Amy Tan was in it and they played at the book fair that year. And so the fun part of that story is Warren Zevon was still alive and he sat in with them. So it meant nothing to me then less than nothing. But I did get to see Zevon and these writers do werewolves of London about three in the afternoon at Miami International Book Fair. And I guess that was something to have seen.

Speaker 2 (00:06:36):

I also grew up with adults

Speaker 4 (00:06:39):

Who

Speaker 2 (00:06:40):

Set inappropriate boundaries as far as who they brought around, which was I cannot for the life of me remember my first reading experience seeing somebody as I was raised around a lot of poets, mostly the beat poets from San Francisco, Jack Hirschman, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferling, Getti, Diane DUP Prima, and I can only remember as a child hearing a lot of poem, communist poems and smelling a lot of pot. And that was my childhood.

Speaker 4 (00:07:11):

It's interesting, we all grew up in childhoods that were not monitored. We all grew up with the smell of pot and we ended up being writers.

Speaker 2 (00:07:22):

No regrets. So where did you first learn how to have an appearance before really getting into your specific experiences? What was the first moment where you started to think, okay, how do I do this? How do I learn how to do this?

Speaker 4 (00:07:41):

Well, my first book, my first reading, no one showed up and the Barnes and Noble lady was nice enough to take off her badge and sit there. And then somebody who blurred me, who I didn't know when he blurbed me. But then I met him afterwards and he became my friend Larry Doyle showed up and I did my reading for the Barnes and Noble Lady and Larry Doyle, my new friend who had just blurbed me. And after the reading Larry said, and that was really terrible, and I said it was, and he said, yeah, you got to figure out what to read and you should just read the sex parts. I'll help you figure it out. And so then I figured it out or he helped me figure it out. What a great mentor. Yeah, he was great

Speaker 2 (00:08:21):

Because I've been acting since I was 11. Performance was always a different thing for me, especially when reading poetry. But as far as poetry is concerned, that can be a really sleepy medium, especially because you're usually reading in rooms like this where there's no, it's just fluorescent lights and it doesn't feel particularly engaging. So oftentimes I try to find and learned this along the way as a teenager and then in my twenties too, just trying to find reading experiences that was sort of more about what I was writing about and felt more like it was an experience than just a lecture hall or something. So I feel like where you read also informs how you read and that's really, really important.

Speaker 5 (00:09:12):

I think that's true. What was the question again? What am I talking about?

Speaker 2 (00:09:18):

Where did you start to learn how to give

Speaker 5 (00:09:21):

A offer of appearance? Well, in the first of what I'm sure will be many twists and big reveals over the course of this panel, I was also a child actor and I appeared in a number of commercials and movies Nobody's seen between.

Speaker 3 (00:09:37):

He was almost in the Sandlot.

Speaker 5 (00:09:39):

That's true. I had two callbacks in the Sandlot I was going to be. Yeah, yeah. Then I wasn't.

Speaker 2 (00:09:44):

That's awesome.

Speaker 5 (00:09:46):

So it's going to be going to, that'll when they make the sequel, that'll be, but Cast me is going to be so I don't know. I mean it's a very different kind of performance, but I think the first thing for an author to get used to is just the idea of being at a front of a room and talking for as long as I'm talking right now and people are all listening to me and we're not listening to me, but you're all looking at me and you have to be comfortable with that. And it can be a profoundly uncomfortable thing. I'm pretty comfortable with it. I could happily keep talking. I won't, but I think that's sort of the, was there an answer there?

Speaker 2 (00:10:24):

Yes, there was. That's good enough.

Speaker 3 (00:10:26):

Yeah. I think it's interesting that both Amber and Justin bring up other performative mediums because I feel like often one of the big problems with readings that I attend is no one people write a book and then they don't realize that performing it is a totally different thing and that you can't just stand there and read the words and have anyone want to listen. Even if you're a really good writer, which I've seen many really good writers give really terrible readings. And I think for me, a part of it was so when my dad's a writer and I went as a kid when I was 12, I went on a book tour with him in England and he's British, so that's also sort of, they're just performy type people and we're Jews, so the British and the Jews, it's like a lot of performance anyway, and I went on a book tour with him and no one came to any of the readings and it was really depressing, but he still got up there and did his little song and dance and I found that sort of depressing, but also kind of just like, this is what you do.

Speaker 3 (00:11:34):

And so I had my dad who gave readings and I had an uncle who was a standup comedian, so I sort of just saw a lot of people doing these things and I think just imitated them basically when I started doing it myself. And I think also just going into a lot of readings and seeing what I didn't want to do. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:11:51):

I agree with

Speaker 3 (00:11:52):

That is the main thing. Especially I'm sure many of you guys are m FFA students, you probably have to go to tons of readings and you probably just sit there waiting for the wine to get brought out. In my m FFA program, they wouldn't bring out the wine until everyone had read so that everyone would stay. And it shouldn't be like that. It shouldn't be so boring. And maybe we're not up to that point, but I think we all have some ideas of how to make things less shitty. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:12:23):

Well, and it's interesting because at the bookstore level too, where when we are close to a university and there's a master's program and there's a PhD program, creative writing, the sheer number of people who are in that program who are not coming to any one of 250 author events a year when we have Pulitzer Prize winners and Booker Award winners, and you can find yourself going out to drinks with an author afterwards and the students don't show up, they don't show up, they don't come to the events and the very few who do,

Speaker 3 (00:12:47):

It's because you don't have enough free booze.

Speaker 2 (00:12:49):

There you go. It's the free booze.

Speaker 3 (00:12:51):

That's the problem with the under. That's why no one comes to the undergrad events,

Speaker 2 (00:12:54):

I think too. And that doesn't mean that you have to have a performance aspect that you don't, that's not true to who you are. But I think even sometimes the way in which you order what you're going to read and how you read it so many times, often I'll go to a poetry reading where somebody, the first poet that reads, is going to read the darkest shit they have. And that is a very bad idea. I think you want to always disarm an audience and if you have anything that's lighter or funnier, always. We have a motto in the poetry community where we say funny poem, funny poem, hard poem, hard poem, hard poem, book sales. That's like a known motto. And if you do it in that order, you're easing people into the language. And again, I am only speaking for poetry, which can be sort of a harder thing to absorb. But then also that motto sometimes doesn't work because if you are going on after somebody who just read the most beautiful work about the death of someone they loved, coming out with a poem about masturbation may not be correct.

Speaker 3 (00:13:54):

I've done that.

Speaker 2 (00:13:55):

I totally believe you have. The other night

Speaker 3 (00:13:57):

Did I at the Columbia room? Oh yeah, I did. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:14:00):

But so order I think is also just really important. Who

Speaker 3 (00:14:03):

You, sometimes people need a break after a lot of death though. You want some masturbation,

Speaker 2 (00:14:07):

But reading a crowd in that way is,

Speaker 3 (00:14:10):

Yeah. Yeah. I think you

Speaker 2 (00:14:11):

Disgusted me.

Speaker 3 (00:14:13):

I think there are some universal, it's true. It's like everyone's a different writer and you write different things and you have to sort of know your own work and know what this particular audience is going to be good for or is going to enjoy or is going to be engaged by. And sometimes you're going to kind of figure that out when you get there. And sometimes you can figure that out by seeing if they're rowdy and drunk or if they're a quiet bookstore crowd who just want to be told a nice pleasant story to or something. But I think there are some universal things like one nobody wants to listen to you read for 45 minutes. Yes. I think that's number, the shorter reader is always the best remembered.

Speaker 2 (00:14:53):

And again,

Speaker 4 (00:14:54):

Sell more books.

Speaker 3 (00:14:55):

Yeah, absolutely. You can give a five minute reading and you think you can't and that you can't cut the thing that you want to read down to that length, but you can and it'll be better and probably it'll end up being better anyway and it'll be a good exercise in economy of language.

Speaker 2 (00:15:15):

I was going to say, just going back to the beginning of planning then. So before you even know whether or not you're going to read or talk or it's going to be you or three people going closer to the beginning, it starts with the who, what, where, why? Who is it? Is it you? Is it you and a friend? Is it you and your colleagues? Did it set up on a book tour? Are you doing it yourself? What are you going to do? Where is it going to be? Why are you even doing it? So where does that start for each of you at that stage?

Speaker 4 (00:15:44):

Well, I mean my last book, the Wonder Bread Summer, I mean it opens, it's based on a true story. When I worked for a cocaine dealer in Oakland and he kept pulling his dick out at work. And so the story opens with the girl at work and the guy pulls out his enormous dick,

Speaker 3 (00:16:02):

Could you show us how big if you just wanted to do a,

Speaker 4 (00:16:05):

It was like that for the record of the

Speaker 2 (00:16:08):

Podcast, just the length of a salmon. Do that

Speaker 4 (00:16:10):

Again. It was like that. Now are

Speaker 2 (00:16:12):

We

Speaker 4 (00:16:14):

Nuts?

Speaker 2 (00:16:14):

Now they're making a bread box.

Speaker 4 (00:16:16):

No, but it was like,

Speaker 3 (00:16:17):

What was the girth on? It was

Speaker 4 (00:16:19):

Centimeter. He held it in his hand. It looked like his hand would go down with it. It was heavy looking. So he kept pulling his dick out at work.

Speaker 3 (00:16:26):

I just saw that guy at the urinal. He's actually here, he's looking for you. He knows you wrote the book.

Speaker 4 (00:16:36):

So this happened in real life and I opened my book with this, not because I thought I want to open with a dick, but because I thought I wanted to write about this girl. And I thought this was a moment of crisis when the guy at work is pulling his dick out. And so the book opened with this, and so then I go on book tour and it's really reading that passage was either, I had to look at the audience and think, just sort of look at their faces and think, can I read this or can I not read this? And sometimes I would say, there's a dick in the beginning. Are you guys cool with that in la? I could read it and wherever I was in New York, my editor Kate was there and she said, don't read it. Don't read it. So I mean, I couldn't remember who was in the audience, but sometimes it's just looking at that moment.

Speaker 5 (00:17:20):

Yeah, sometimes you have to be willing to go, are you guys cool? This is going to be cool. Yeah. But it's also funny that things that, yeah, you guys, I'm not sure if you guys are cool, you didn't, didn't really give me that back. But that's why you ask. But also one thing that I think it can be surprising at readings is things that read differently out loud than on the page. And a lot of what registers, what Jessica called a moment of crisis presented to an audience, it often registers as comedy. I learned this when I was doing readings for my first book. A lot of stories that I thought were very sad and tragic that I suppose are in their way when read out loud, they read kind of emotional slapstick because they're just these terrible things, befalling people in rapid succession and sexual misconduct and all these things that out loud in a room full of people, the audience doesn't really have a way to interact with you other than basically by laughing, I mean you're not going to collectively gasp at an emotional moment.

Speaker 5 (00:18:23):

You're probably not going to stop and break into applause. And so the laughter is kind of it. And particularly if you're reading sex scenes, even if they're intrinsically sad, I'm still up here saying dirty words and you're hearing them and you're all sitting with each other, hearing each other, watching each other hear them. And so it becomes much funnier than it is, than it otherwise would be. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's just something to know because otherwise you might find yourself quite shocked and even hurt that you thought you were pouring your heart out here and people are just laughing at you. Well, you did and they are.

Speaker 2 (00:19:05):

So where have been the best and worst places that you have had a reading experience? One of each. I was just thinking about going back to that first question, and I did a reading at Fun, fun fun festival, which is a comedy festival, but I did it as part of their a literary thing. And I remember doing a reading with a queer author who had written about, she had one of those pea cups for women where you can put it in your pants and you can the funnel. And so she read this story and then while she was reading it, she took a piss on stage. I was like, this is a comedy festival that kind of works. So I was like, now I'm going to read the saddest poems I have about being a child star. That went back to the first question entirely, but you were talking about where are places you should you enjoy reading? You mean a good experience, a bad experience you've had?

Speaker 3 (00:20:03):

I think for the most part it depends and it depends where you are in your career and what you're trying to do. Bookstore readings are good if you have a book that you've written and they can sell it there, but they're also bad because they're stuffier and less fun and reading series that there are all these reading series where there's five, six writers or whatever can be really good, especially at the beginning of your career because it's like everyone brings three friends and then there's 30 people there instead of the two who are going to come see you and it's at a bar and everyone's drinking and it's fun and they like you and then you hang out with them after. So I think it depends what you're trying to get out of the reading. If you want to meet people and get exposure for your work and all that stuff, you probably don't need to be booking a bookstore tour in cities where you only know one person or something.

Speaker 3 (00:20:55):

You probably just want to sort of get into your local little scene and get involved in local reading series or whatever and get on a bill with 10 people and read a very short thing and get people to like you. But then when you have a book and stuff, you sometimes want to read in bookstores, you sometimes don't. I mean, I think when I first had my first book come out, I thought it would be really awesome to go on a book tour and then I went on one and it kind of sucks. It's great in a few cities and then the rest of the places where you don't know anyone and people don't actually read, it's like you go to some depressing city and stay in a depressing hotel and two old people come to your reading. So it seems more glamorous than it is I think with exceptions. But I think especially if you're doing a small press book say or something, I think you should really try to only book events that you think you can get people to come to and maybe that have other people reading at who might bring more people.

Speaker 4 (00:22:01):

I think if somebody invites you, like the Catholic Women's Book Club actually read that book with the penis and cocaine and they loved it. I think you should never assume who's going to love or hate your book. And they were great. The Naked book club that I went to was probably the most interesting reading I went to and it was held in a gym and when I got there, there was naked yoga going on in one room and naked men working out and there was only one woman there and the entire place kind of smelled like testicles and it was all naked guys. And I brought a friend with me and she said, well, at least nobody's carrying a cell phone that'll go off. But then in the middle of it, the guy she was sitting behind, his cell phone went off and he stood up and bent over to pick it up off the floor. So everything was right in her face, but they were an interested group. I feel like if somebody asks you and they're interested

Speaker 3 (00:22:58):

Seem like so many penises can I feel like everything,

Speaker 4 (00:23:01):

I didn't look that time. I always get made eye contact. I didn't look at any penises. That naked book. I mean it's all the naked book

Speaker 3 (00:23:08):

Club. Don't feel like after that guy with the huge one took it out, you're always looking for that one. It's like the glass slipper.

Speaker 4 (00:23:15):

No, I didn't want that one. Listen, there is however many women there are in this audience. Every single one of them has had a guy show them their penis because that's what happens when you have a vagina. People show you their penis. So it's not like it just happens to me not normally at author events. Raise your hand if you are lady and you have not had a guy show you his penis not, there you go. Has anyone ever seen me run offer event? Yeah, it's just a normal thing. I'm going to try a little redirect.

Speaker 5 (00:23:46):

Stacey's given me the eye. This

Speaker 2 (00:23:48):

Better be about dicks.

Speaker 5 (00:23:49):

No, no, it won't be. What I was going to say is I think I want to second everything Adam said. If you're talking about reading kind as a function of promotion and a part of the author to and the kind of apparatus that goes along with pushing a book, but I think there's a good argument to be made for readings for their own sake. And for me, I like to try out new material, particularly short stories at readings. I like to see how it plays to an audience. I like to see if not the punchlines, but the lines that I want to land that I think should hit are actually hitting where they're supposed to. And so there's a way that it's actually, I think part of the writing process and it can be really nice. And in a context like that, there's a real value in intimacy.

Speaker 5 (00:24:37):

And if you have three people come to your bookstore and you flew across the country and everyone's out a bunch of money, I can understand why that's frustrating. But in a slightly different context, if you're reading at a book group or to some friends in a bar or in a kind of purposefully private or intimate space, it can be really nice. I met a woman earlier today who I was reintroduced to her. I read at this weird private poetry workshop that my friend Ariana runs, and she'd asked me to come and read to her class and she said, do whatever you want. And I said, well, there's one story in my book I never get to read all the way through because it's really too long to do a reading. And she said, well, the other day we read Kafka's letter to his father out loud to each other. It took four hours. You're not going to scare us off. Do what you want. I came and I sat in this woman's apartment and this was an audience who was going in had committed to just doing whatever I wanted to do. And I read this story, took about 35, maybe 40 minutes, and then I talked to him about it for a couple hours after and it was a really special thing for me. Count on one hand the number of times I've ever been asked to do that or had my work treated

Speaker 2 (00:25:49):

That way and that you don't feel like when you're doing it, that you're burdening everybody too or actually feels

Speaker 5 (00:25:53):

Good. Yes, you asked for it, you got it. Shit.

Speaker 2 (00:25:59):

I just did a book release party for my book in New York. And one of the things I find is having musicians, especially as a poet to score your work can be a very powerful, magical thing. Again, specific to poetry I think. And that show that we did in New York was one long song that never stopped for 45 minutes. And that might sound like a long poetry show to you, but if have, I think if you treat it almost like you're in a band and you've created a story around the set that you've put together, and I was fortunate to have Yola Tango who are incredible, and we created an actual scored reading that felt more like an experience with stories a little bit in between. But I think that even a 45 minute set for poetry is incredibly long and you're asking for a lot of attention span. And again, I go back to what you said about shorter is better, but I think

Speaker 3 (00:26:53):

It also, it depends on the event and it depends if people are coming, if it's like your book and everyone's coming to see, you can, sometimes

Speaker 2 (00:27:01):

They're pay attention though, sometimes not. Sometimes I have been to book release parties where someone reads for an hour and it's like, you want to do the best pieces that you have and then you want people to go buy it over at that booth. Bookstore tell you, you want them to say, oh no, read more. That's what you want them to feel. You tell book our authors at bookstores now, we say, don't read. Don't read unless you're Sebastian Berry and you're dramatically and toning everything. There are readers who are very funny, but honestly, honestly don't read. If you do read, you read for five to 10 minutes, you're giving them a sample, you're teasing your audience because of that exact reason. If you read too much, you're giving it all away. They're not going to read the book. You want them to buy the book, they want them to buy your work or you want them to remember you. So when you do have a book, they will come by your book. Except for experiences like that where someone actually says, no, we're an audience. You've been told upfront, we're an audience that wants this. You can assume that they want it. The

Speaker 3 (00:27:52):

More engaging you are, the more you can get away with. It's like, and you know can tell when an audience is interested in you and when they're not and when you've lost them. I'll often, if I feel like the audience has lost interest, I'll just

Speaker 2 (00:28:05):

Stop. I always bring, well now it used to be an iPod back in the 1920s, but I always, if I feel a crowd is if I'm losing them, I'll just put on, you know what, fuck this poem. She's got a cable. Lemme put on some r Kelly. Any men want to come up, I'll shave your chest. It'll take five minutes and then we'll go back into poetry. What do you think? I'm a big proponent of shit like that.

Speaker 3 (00:28:29):

Shaving

Speaker 2 (00:28:30):

Dicks, chests, all of

Speaker 3 (00:28:31):

It. Well, no, but I think mean all of it brings up this point, which is it's like, I think the problem is when we take ourselves so seriously that we can't have fun. And I think even if you write a serious book, you still need to be an engaging persona. However you're going to do that. And I think part of that is people come to readings to enjoy themselves. They don't come to think about suicide while you read something really depressing or maybe a few writers people come to do that. But it's like even if you're going to read something intense and depressing, you might make a couple jokes or tell a funny little anecdote before you get on stage just to, you want them to be your friend. You want them to be interested and engaged. And sometimes that means shaving someone's chest. Sometimes it just means not reading in a monotone voice. You know what I mean? It could be either of those things. And I think that's for you to decide, but you just don't want people to be bored. Whatever you do. And I think you have to accept that you're writing alone, even if it's the most amazing piece of writing, is still might be boring to listen to, especially for a long period of time.

Speaker 4 (00:29:50):

And I always, no matter what city I'm reading in, I try and find someone I know in that city to come read with me. I hate reading alone. It's way more fun to do it with more people.

Speaker 2 (00:29:58):

That's actually true. At the bookstore level, we had a program where we would pair opening readers with published authors. So we'd have Andre Deus come and a local author who's been, we read their work, we went to them and invited them. So it's not just people coming in and saying, Hey, can I do this? And we did this for about a year and a half or two years for a lot of different authors, and it worked wonderfully because your opening reader isn't competing with sales, but they're getting exposure, they're getting experience, they're getting practice. So if you can ever be an opening reader for someone in that kind of context, it gives you that chance to have that interaction and you're bringing more people to the event. We found poetry events, three people is often ideal because each person brings an average of 10 to 15 people and now you have a nice big full house, everyone's

Speaker 3 (00:30:41):

Happy. Well, you don't want too many because then that gets really long.

Speaker 2 (00:30:44):

Anything more than three

Speaker 3 (00:30:45):

Is it's, there's a nice balance of enough people to bring people, but not enough people that it's going to be really long.

Speaker 2 (00:30:53):

It's sort of the 45 minute rule. If you're alone, then you parse out your reading, your talking and your q and a portion so it doesn't go over 40, 45 minutes if you're with others, also portion it out so you don't go over 45 minutes. Anything over that and anything over an hour, you're losing people. They're done. No matter how interesting you are. I started a nonprofit with a poet named Mindy Phy called right now Poetry Society that was specifically designed to create unique poetry programming in this exact context. And we did for six years an annual show in Los Angeles called The Drums Inside Your Chest, where we had five poets of varying degrees, whether it was academic or performance or slam or anything in between. And each person read for 10 minutes. And in between that we would do pallet cleansers. So we would have either musicians or this guy Rob Zare who's a magician from the Magic Castle, or just little sort of vignettes in between the readings as a way to sort of let people clear their minds. And those shows would, each author that did them would sell, and I'm not exaggerating a hundred books. It was like a crazy for poetry. That's a lot of books for one night, anything that's a lot of books for one night, but

Speaker 3 (00:32:08):

Two books there, a lot of books

Speaker 2 (00:32:09):

For, well, I mean it was a big showcase too. We'd get like 500 people there or something, but that wasn't an attitude or an idea. And I think if you are reading it might be interesting or if you're ever curating your own show or putting your own show together to think a little bit outside of the box of whatever it is that you are reading. So if you want to bring a magician or a musician or someone to talk about how they're in school to be a veterinarian, I don't know, just bring something to sort of make it feel like it's larger than itself. That's a thought, an idea. So speaking of the audience size, we're talking about going places where people, how nice it is to be in intimate readings. You also will find yourself in places where you don't know anyone. There's a nice audience ratio rule to keep in mind too that when you do a launch in a hometown or if you are going to a friend's place and a bunch of people and you have 90 people show up and you're really excited, and then you go to that next town and you have three people show up, a hundred percent of that audience you don't know, you just introduce yourself to three people who never knew you before.

Speaker 2 (00:33:18):

Whereas your hometown audience, they all know you. That's your support. So how do you kind of reconcile that? You need that emotional push. Then also that

Speaker 3 (00:33:28):

Exposure. It's really nice because as writers, we we're home almost all the time writing. Some of us don't leave our houses ever, and you write a book and you think that the world is going to respond to it and it doesn't in nearly the same way that you imagine. Maybe people will like your Facebook post that says that your book came out and maybe you'll get a couple reviews, but for the most part it's sort of is this thing that just appears in the world and it's whereabouts become unknown to you. People might read it and might have it and might take that experience and have private thoughts about it and you have no idea. And so I think the nicest thing about doing readings and going to places, even if there's two people there, it's like it's just a way of engaging with someone who actually, it's a way of sharing your work in a way that you can see someone responding to and talk to people who have read things you've written. That happens a lot less often than I think one would think. You talk to a lot of people who know the name of your book and what its cover looks like, but when you go to these events, even there's just one person who's like, I read this book and really liked it. That's really nice and encouraging and you're like, oh, it was worth spending seven years writing it. You liked it.

Speaker 3 (00:34:49):

Yeah, no, but seriously, I mean, it sounds depressing, but I think it can also be really uplifting.

Speaker 5 (00:34:57):

Yeah, no, I think so too. I gave one of those readings when I was on tour for flings. I went to this great independent bookstore in Newton, in Newton, Massachusetts, Newtonville books, and I basically got rained out. It was a rainy night and four or five, maybe six people came. It was a small thing and it could have had very much the kind of cast that Adam was describing going on tour with his dad. But it happened that Adam's dad was one of those five or six people and he and I and the bookstore owners spent a very lovely evening together and the audience was great, and we got to basically sit in a circle and talk and then went and got dinner after. It was a really nice thing. I mean, now I feel like I have a relationship with that bookstore and with Adam's dad, which was nice. He's a good guy. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:35:55):

I mean, I agree. I, I think that I'm a middle child. I don't know about you guys, but some of you probably middle. But I mean from a life of invisibility and writing and feeling invisible and really almost literally being invisible, like being in your head and being trapped in your head and being invisible, to actually go out in the world and come out of your head and to have something that was in your head, connect to a human outside of your head and then connect to that human is a great thing. So if it's one person, it's totally great and it doesn't matter that it's not more, just one person is a great moment

Speaker 2 (00:36:28):

And Patchett has a great story about her first tour and having this just awful time changing in her car, going in, nobody knowing she was even supposed to be there, but now I mean she ended up sitting with a bookseller and having this wonderful conversation and that woman then went on to just sell a ton of her books. And with that happening in every little place she went, now everybody knows who she is. So those tiny moments, those relationships can really, really propel you into that next stage of your career down the line, and you don't even know that that's happening when it's happening. And also,

Speaker 4 (00:36:56):

I have to say, booksellers have to be some of the nicest people on earth, booksellers and librarians. And so if you have time to hang out in a bookstore with the booksellers who are selling your book, I mean, it's a great thing. It's nice to talk to them and be grateful.

Speaker 2 (00:37:11):

And I promise if no one shows up at your event, they are mortified because they have actually tried to make this work for you and they feel that's very true, really, really bad. So what constitutes a successful event? How do you know? Is it successful? Is it the sales numbers? Is it the reaction of the audience? Is it how you feel when you're done?

Speaker 4 (00:37:29):

It's that I didn't throw up from fear.

Speaker 2 (00:37:34):

I would want to say book sales, but honestly some of the best shows I've ever had, I didn't sell a single book. So it also I think just depends on the socioeconomic group that you're reading in front of and who's there, who's not there. Also, how good the entire evening is, is sometimes often I've been to readings where there's been 10 people on a bill of something and two of them are good and everybody else is like snoozy. And so I think that can also, I think it's the experience. I think it's exactly we're talking about. It's a sense that the audience is with you and when you're reading things that are heartbreaking or they make you want to laugh and people are laughing with you and you're like, okay, this is okay. It's really funny that this awful thing happened to me. Or if you're sharing things that are extremely painful and hard to speak on and you can hear a pin drop in the room, oftentimes when I can hear a pin drop. And also I don't see people texting, especially in a dark room, if I'm in a bar or something like that and you can see lights flashing up, I think that always feels really good, just when you've connected with the audience, it's a really special feeling.

Speaker 5 (00:38:41):

Yeah. I think I got a second what Amber said. I mean, when you're having a good night, I mean any other night, if your life, you're in a good mood, you were happy when it started, you're still happy when it's over, that's usually a sign of success. But I guess the only other thing I wanted to throw out there, it's kind of about all this before I pass this out of my mind, is that you have to reconcile yourself to the fact that literature is a slow, it's just slow. It is a slow art form. It's written slowly, it's read slowly, and books have long and largely hidden lives in their composition, but also in their reception. The publicity lifecycle of a book is very brief. It com