Once upon a time writers sat in their garrets, placed their silent words on paper and gently dispersed their wisdom to the universe. Readers read with down-turned eyes and did not aspire to look upon the face of God. This was appropriate because most of the writers that we read were long since dead.
Today’s writers are contemporary - current - urgent. Readers are greedy and live in a world of immediate gratification and competing entertainments. These readers want to look God in the eye. They demand God’s personal explanation, and they are used to getting what they want.

Now the garret is empty. Vibrant, living, successful authors have come out into the streets, have faced their public in lecture halls, at festivals, in TV interviews and in the press. They have dressed for the occasion, become celebrities, have sold many many books and have made a great deal of money.

Those of us who hope to follow in their footsteps must stop and question: How?

The successful writers of the new millennium speak.  They have come to terms with their wider artistic role.  They see themselves as performers and accept responsibility for presenting their work, their personality, their history and their wisdom to the public.  They have not cringed from the exposure; rather they have welcomed it, managed it and used it to claim their foothold on the slippery climb to market share.

It is interesting to consider the change in public demand that brings writing to this point.  The great human need for belonging has not diminished.  Quite possibly our lifestyles of absent working parents, TV screen babysitters, depersonalised corner stores, drive-through diners, computerised classrooms, and auto-voice phone systems have focused our deeper need for passionate personal contact.  We now demand this from our entertainers, our stars, our authors.

We want to belong.  We want to be familiar.  We want to know the details.

Writers who spend years compiling carefully constructed manuscripts, following protocols for submissions, studying guidelines, suddenly are asked to speak.  Bravely they launch themselves into the void ¾ that vast black space before the podium.  With trembling untrained hands they clutch an ill-tuned mike and offer up their souls to meet demands of publishers, festival organisers, reviewers and their audience.

For the most part this is done without much preparation, relying on raw innate talent, on some familiarity with words, on the proximity of other panel members.  These writers who would not dream of submitting unedited work to the public, now speak (unedited) and are judged.

A festival organiser, who shall remain nameless, confessed to me, ‘We invite authors who can entertain the audience. We want performers. We want people to come back. An author’s written work has to be a secondary consideration - unless of course the written work has enjoyed considerable success, in which case the audience will want to rub shoulders with success and will forgive ineptitude for speaking … Sometimes.’
 

Tips to stay on the edge