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Letters to a Young Poet
One of the more popular questions you get when you do a reading or a signing or anything else involving your books is "Why?"
And a lot of people have different answers to this one.
It's also one you should have an answer to if people ask, because they're pretty damn persistent, the type of people who ask this type of question, and "I don't know" or "I'm not really sure" apparently are not admissible answers.
Thankfully, if you're a budding writer (as most people who come to book readings/signings are) you have a long time before you have to worry about this question.
It's not until the first time your publisher throws you up in front of an audience that it comes to light that you might want to have a decent answer to that question. Just some friendly advice. Or a warning. Of sorts. Luckily the kind of warning you can put aside and not worry about until you've forgotten about it and remember about three minutes before you get to the stage at which you're ready to take questions from the audience. Unfortunately, remembering the dreaded question and your lack of preparedness for it sort of disrupts the remainder of your reading, thus firmly chucking it down in peoples' minds that you couldn't manage to finish a book decently, even if you're just reading a bit of it out loud.
And it doesn't help that you then fuddle through the rest of the reading until you bump gently to a stop with your red face and sweaty palms to take questions, the first three of which, just to prolong the agony, are about what the view is outside your window (normally the three decker across the road and the tree in front of it, in Worcester, at any rate), how well you perform when faced with deadlines (not at all well), and what food you like to munch on when stopping to think about where the story is taking you (carrots). Of course, none of those you answer with the truthful answers, because you're trying to figure out just why it is you write in the first place, to anticipate the question you know is coming. No, your answers run along the lines of, "Ehhh heh heh herrrr, stuff," "not at all well," and "steak."
And then the question comes, and you wind up saying, perhaps a bit too rushed, *plok*.
Actually, that's the sound of you disappearing in a fit of time travel or matter transference or some other bit of complete nonsense that's just leapt to your head, and you explain the plokking noise you just made is the sound of you disappearing in a fit of time travel or matter transference or some other bit of wizardry that is in your new novel and is the sort of invention you wish someone would get around to inventing when people ask you questions you're not entirely sure what the answer to them is.
And then, of course, you spend the rest of the evening trying to figure out how you're going to work that into your next novel...
disclaimer:
This is not happening... this is not happening...
London, by the way, isn't too bad, though it's going to seed a bit, apparently Tom and Penelope (as if I have to tell you who they are) are moving here.
It's just all downhill from there, isn't it?
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