Victoria Noe's Blog, page 10

When Life Gets in the Way of Writing

                   lovingonme.com

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time,  you know I’ve spent almost two years working on a new book. Fag Hags. Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community has taken on a life of its own. What started as a nagging idea turned into what I fully admit is an obsession to share important, previously-unknown stories of straight women around the world throughout the history of the epidemic.

Big project, right? I knew from the beginning it would be, but with each passing month it seemed to grow in scope and importance. Strangers around the world offered assistance. Interviewees laughed and cried and wanted to know when we could celebrate the publication of a book they said they couldn’t wait to read.

Eight months ago, on a trip to New York to interview women for the book and conduct research, I fell and broke my writing hand. I’d never broken a bone before, but I managed to dislocate one finger and break four bones. I had emergency surgery to insert five pins that remained in for almost six weeks. During those weeks I was in constant pain, and started four months of physical therapy. I still have some residual issues, mostly limited to muscles freezing up and occasional soreness. Big improvement over those first few weeks.

I lost two months on the book. I tried to convince myself I didn’t, but that was some serious denial at work. I was still determined to keep my deadline of a December 1 publication date, because, well, stubborn.

I spent the month of May and the first few days of June mostly in New York, mostly working on the book. I made a lot of progress, interviewed some terrific women. But I used the trip, too, to gauge my progress: was I really still on track?

By the time I got back to Chicago two weeks ago, I knew the answer was ‘no’. As much as I’ve tried to make up for lost time, I couldn’t.

I let myself be sad about this for a whole day. And then an unexpected conversation made me realize that I now had an even bigger opportunity. The new publication date is March 1, 2018 (sounds far away, but not really). March is Women’s History Month and includes National Women and Girls’ HIV Awareness Day. The book is likely to earn far more attention in March than in December during the holidays. I went from being sad to being excited, with no stopover at “I’m okay with it”.

Trust me, I’m not the only writer who has been sidetracked by unexpected health issues. Two writer friends have faced much more serious health issues in the past year. So have friends who aren’t writers. No one is immune.

This summer I’m sticking closer to home: transcribing interviews, requesting permission to use photographs, figuring out the gaps in the book chapters so I can adjust the research. There are themes emerging on their own and I want to respect that. By September I should be writing past the first chapter.

Frustrated? Yes, of course. Overwhelmed? On a daily basis. Excited? More and more every day. And now I have to make sure you’re excited, too, when you read it.

Back to work.

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How Long Should You Grieve Your Friend?

[image error]You know how it is: a conversation, a song, a place triggers a memory of your friend. Your first thought may be “I haven’t thought about that in years”. Your second – and third and fourth and fifth – thought is about your friend and the hole in your life since they died.

We don’t do grief well. It’s messy and uncomfortable and all too clear a reminder of our own mortality. So we do what most of us do best: we push it aside. We assign time limits – seven days sitting shiva, three days off from work for the death of a parent (probably none for a friend). When those around us don’t conform to our desire to return to normalcy, we snap at them to “get over it”. We insist that our friend would not want us to mourn, at least not for this long, but the truth is that we simply can’t handle sadness.

I’m here to tell you it doesn’t matter what they would want. We grieve those we love, and as annoying as they can often be, we love our friends. So stop using them as an excuse to not grieve.

A 2004 study of Vietnam veterans at the National Center for  PTSD at the Veterans Administration in Palo Alto, California found that for veterans, the loss of one of their battle buddies was as acute thirty years later as the death of a spouse only six months earlier. That’s right: thirty years. It hardly seems possible, but it’s all too real.

A lot of my reading and speaking and conversations in the past month or so have been about long-term survivors in the AIDS community: people who are HIV-positive and HIV-negative who survived the plague years. Like military veterans, they did not have the luxury of grieving when their friends died. But now, decades later, they are breaking their silence to finally grieve and honor their friends.

They themselves are suffering. Pushing down that grief for so long has resulted in depression, social isolation and survivor guilt. Only now, a generation later, are they beginning to feel comfortable talking about the dozens and hundreds of friends who died.

They’re gathering in meetings, much like veterans gravitating to VFW halls, to tell their stories and keep the memory of their friends alive.

It may not surprise you to hear that they – like veterans – are often criticized for ‘living in the past’. But if you listen closely to both groups, you won’t hear exaggerated retellings of heroic exploits. You won’t hear them nostalgic fo rthe ‘good old days’. You’ll hear small, quiet stories of their friends: the meals they shared, the hopes for their futures, the trust and support of their relationships.

Their friendships did not last until the friends were both in middle age. Some of them didn’t last until their 30th birthdays. And in mostly private moments, there is deep sorrow for that fact.

That grief keeps the friendship alive. Had that friendship simply faded as many do, a victim of busy schedules or changed priorities, it may not have been remembered so intensely.

So, how long is long enough to grieve your friend?

Maybe the better question is ‘how long would you keep the friendship going if they were alive?’

Yeah, I thought so.

 

 

 

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Pride and Pulse: One Year Later

Monday is the first anniversary of the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people were murdered and 58 others were injured.

The shooting happened during Pride Month, when members of the LGBT community, long driven underground, celebrate their freedom to love.

Pride is rooted in the Stonewall riots, not celebrations. During the plague years of the AIDS epidemic, Pride parades were one of the few opportunities to get the media to focus on the desperation of those times (though the film footage was almost always of the most outrageously dressed participants). In cities across the US, Pride parades included contingents from organizations that could help people get tested and treated. The bonus was always free condoms, tossed by revelers to the crowds. I attended more than a few parades and rode on a float once. It wasn’t my parade, but I could still support it.

Times change. A diagnosis of HIV is no longer an instant death sentence. Gay men and lesbians can legally marry and adopt children. They are no longer forced to live their lives in the closet. You’re now more likely to see Mardi Gras beads tossed than condoms. Pride is one continuous party.

But then Pulse happened.

Like many of my LGBT friends, I was devastated by the news. I blogged about it two days later, and then again, as I struggled to deal with the anger and grief.

In the aftermath, one of my friends helped found Gays Against Guns, which has become a visible force in the effort to enact common sense gun laws. It’s certainly not a group that I ever expected to see, but Pulse changed everything. While the laws are now on the side of the LGBT community, there are still individuals who are motivated to kill them.

This year, on June 12, gatherings will be held around the country to honor the victims and recommit to equality. I’ll be at one of them here in Chicago, to show my support.

Since last year, my LGBT friends have been harassed on the street, attacked online, and beaten on their way home. They didn’t deserve it. No one deserves it.

Many parades are planning a return to the protest days, because obviously, there are life and death issues to address. I’ll be at the Chicago Pride parade in my ACT UP t-shirt, because the AIDS epidemic is not over. But I’ll celebrate too. Because friends can do both.

See you there.

 

 

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HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day

June 5 is HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day, so I’m sharing my essay, “Long-Term Survivor”, that won the 2015 Christopher Hewitt Award for Creative Nonfiction from A&U Magazine. Since then I’ve written more and presented on the topic of moral injury in long-term survivors, something that is close to my heart. We can’t help each other until we recognize the challenges. And for me, that meant admitting that I had challenges, too.

 

Long-Term Survivor

It’s only the past few years that that designation has become widely used. Hell, no one expected it would ever be possible. There was a time when my only prayer was to get through a week without reading the obituary of someone I knew or admired from afar.

Since many who have reached that milestone are also baby boomers like me, I’ve taken a special interest in their challenges. During a visit to New York, I attended a listening session at GMHC and was profoundly moved by stories of isolation and loneliness, especially from straight men and women who felt a unique stigma. But I was an observer, not a participant.

A few months ago, when Jeff Berry at TPAN (Test Positive Aware Network) announced The Reunion Project in Chicago, I told him I’d like to attend, though I wasn’t a long-term survivor.

“Yes, you are,” he insisted.

“But I’m not positive,” I insisted right back.

“But you were there.” I still don’t identify as a long-term survivor, but he was right: I was there.

I’ve been in and out of the community since about 1983. I started out volunteering and then became a fundraiser. The deaths of people I knew, mostly but not exclusively men, piled up during those early years. If I lost touch with a gay friend, I assumed it was because he was dying or already dead. I talked about my work with few people outside the community. To be a straight woman working for an AIDS organization in the late 80s/early 90s was as isolating as it gets.

I know: Elizabeth Taylor and Princess Diana, prominent public faces of straight women involved in the community. But most of us weren’t in the public eye. We were caregivers and social workers and advocates. We raised money, delivered meals and found emergency housing for those kicked out by their families. Our social lives consisted of work, fundraising events and memorial services. We did good work and had good intentions, but we were naïve: naïve about the emotional toll of our involvement.

Inside the AIDS community we weren’t always welcome, to put it mildly. We were told to our faces that we didn’t belong, called “breeders” and much worse. We were looked at with suspicion, as if our goal was to attain sainthood for working with modern-day lepers. After years of working in theatre with gay men, I was shocked to be treated with contempt.

We became pariahs in the outside community. “You’ll never get a date now” was my ex-boyfriend’s sneer when I told him I took my first staff position at an ASO. Turned out the asshole was right. Because in 1989, if I told a straight guy I worked for an AIDS organization, that was pretty much the end of the conversation. I went to my friends’ weddings and baby showers, but didn’t discuss my work.

Their attitude was always the same: “Why do you want to do that? It’s not about you.” They were right. I was HIV- then and now. I wasn’t at risk.

But I wanted to help so I kept at it: cranking out grant proposals, organizing fundraisers, showing up at memorial services. By the time I was married with a baby in 1994, though, I was cynical and angry and exhausted. I backed off.

For the next 17 years, I kept up with the medical miracles and observed World AIDS Day. Other than that, I was careful to keep my distance.

After a concussion ended my sales career in 2009, I embarked on something very different: writing. I began work on what became a series of small books about grieving the death of a friend. I assumed AIDS would be one of the topics, but gave it little thought until 2011, when Tracy Baim asked me to contribute an article about my experiences to Windy City Times’ “AIDS@30” series.

I remember sitting down at the computer, not sure I could remember much. I didn’t realize how much I’d deliberately suppressed. But before long my fingers could barely keep up. The anger surged so quickly and so dramatically that it scared the hell out of me.

People and events, places and conversations popped into my head. But what was most troubling to me – and still is – was the isolation. I was not on the inside of the community, not on the outside: somewhere in between, unable to identify completely with either side.

The extent of that isolation was slow to reveal itself. I reconnected with a woman who’d been a volunteer in the same organization where I was the development director. It was soon apparent that our experiences were eerily similar, but until that day – over 20 years later – we had never shared them.

In early 2013, I sent my mother a copy of my book. Now, my parents were always quite liberal in regards to the LGBT community. A gay man was my father’s best friend. My nephew is gay. Acceptance was always there and they never questioned my work. So her initial reaction was not what I expected.

“You never told us. I had no idea you went through any of this.” As it turned out, she wasn’t the only one. People I’d known for 20 years didn’t know I’d ever had any involvement in the AIDS community. Time and again I saw shocked looks on their faces, and heard it in their voices, because I never, ever talked about it.

And that’s when I realized the true cost of isolation. If it was this bad for me, how must it be for those who have lived with the virus for decades, unable to disengage from it for even a minute?

I kept to myself because I didn’t think anyone cared about all the people I knew who were dying. I didn’t think anyone cared that I was afraid to check on friends I’d lost touch with because too often I found out they were already dead. I didn’t think anyone cared that I would come home from work and sit on the couch in the dark, staring at nothing, forcing myself to not feel.

So I wasn’t prepared for people to thank me now, thirty years later, for what I did. I wasn’t prepared for people to seek me out for information or advice. I wasn’t prepared to jump back into the community, this time as a writer and member of ACT UP/NY.

There are days when I don’t have a fucking clue why I’m back. I don’t know what I thought I’d be doing at this age, but it’s not this. Thirty years ago I hoped all this shit would be over, but it’s not.

At the closing of the 2015 US Conference on AIDS, one of the ministers said something that raised goosebumps all over my body: “Sometimes we choose our calling, and sometimes our calling chooses us.”

I still feel frustrated, I still feel angry. But I don’t envision walking away again anytime soon. Because this time, for the first time, I don’t feel alone.

 

For more about HIV Long-Term Survivor Awareness Day, go to HLTSAD.org.

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The Ripples of Our Audience

Writers are always aware that we have an audience, and not just when we’re writing.

We all – no matter how we publish – create marketing plans. Often, when asked who our audience is, insist it’s ‘everyone’. But that’s not realistic or workable as a plan.

We debate the effectiveness of Facebook ads vs. newsletter offers, Amazon promotions vs. Goodreads giveaways. We have at least a pretty good idea of who our audience is: gender, age, geographic location, interests. But sometimes we can still be surprised.

I was in Boston earlier this month, speaking at The Muse and the Marketplace writing conference. It was a cold, dreary, rain-soaked weekend outside the Park Plaza Hotel, but energetic and stimulating inside.

Towards the end of the conference, I was sitting with a group of writers, sharing details about what we’re working on. I shared a bit about my current project (Fag Hags, Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community) and that I was giving a presentation at Mt. Sinai Hospital on the 22nd. The topic was moral injury in long-term survivors in the HIV community, something that has interested me a lot in the past couple of years.

A man near my age sat directly across the table from me. His interest appeared to be more than polite, and he asked me how moral injury presents itself in that group. I explained the various signs: survivor guilt, delayed/unresolved grief, isolation, loneliness, suicide. I told him the story of Spencer Cox, one of the men featured in How to Survive a Plague, who stopped taking his antiretroviral meds and died in late 2012. His death wound up being a catalyst for serious work in recognizing and addressing the needs of the long-term survivor community.

As I talked, his face hardened and he seemed to struggle for control. When I finished my explanation, he looked me in the eye, with a level of pain out of place during lunch in a hotel ballroom. He said he had a friend who’d died recently, a man who had AIDS for a long time.

“He was fine. He was on medication and he was fine. But he stopped taking his meds and he died. He died. And I don’t understand it.”

That man has been on my mind since then. I told this story during my presentation on Monday, to highlight the guilt and bewilderment felt by those left behind. Those of us who are HIV-negative but witnessed the plague years up close are also long-term survivors. And while we don’t have the same physical challenges as those who have lived with the virus for decades, the emotional toll is very similar. We watched our friends die horrific deaths for years before there were effective treatments. And now…now our friends who survived are experiencing a new kind of crisis.

That man – and others like him – were not the original focus of my talk, a presentation I hope to offer again and again. They’re not even the focus of my previous book (Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends). But he proved to me that there is another audience out there.

I did my best to explain to him that day that it wasn’t his fault. That even deep within the HIV/AIDS community, not everyone understands the unique challenges of HIV-positive long-term survivors. For someone outside that community, the shock and frustration must be even greater. I hope, at least for a moment, that I helped.

That conversation has stayed with me. It’s made me more committed than ever to explore and write about the challenges of HIV-negative long-term survivors.  And it’s also made me think about the ripple effect of what we write. That man did not fit my target audience demographics. In fact, he was probably a third ring in that ripple. But he and his pain have changed the way I look at those ripples.

We’ve all had experiences where someone came into our lives, or a song popped up, or a news report played. All unexpected, all unrelated to what we were doing at the time. But they were information, inspiration, answers that changed our lives, or at least our attitudes.

I hope every writer has the experience I’ve had, of someone telling me “This was just what I needed to read”.  I know if I saw that man again –  or if by chance he’s reading this now – I’d say to him, “That was just what I needed to hear.”

You just never know.

 

 

 

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Public Speaking for Shy Authors – Part 2

I recently gave a presentation at The Muse and the Marketplace writing conference in Boston: “Public Speaking for Painfully Shy Authors”. It’s a terrific weekend that I highly recommend to any author committed to improving their craft and career.

My presentation was in the first block after the opening keynote, which turned out to be great. Everyone was awake and energized and eager to learn. I greeted everyone as they arrived and asked if there was anything specific they were interested in learning. That gave me a chance to figure out ways to make sure the presentation met their needs.

The description in the program promised that there would be time for two or three people to be guinea pigs: stand in front of the group and do a reading that we would all then critique. Honestly, it takes a lot of courage to do that, especially for those who are scared. Two women volunteered.

One was somewhat comfortable in front of groups – in fact, she was on a panel the following day – but not so comfortable reading her own work. When she read from her new book, her voice was strong and confident, a big change from the way she rambled in her too-long introduction. The group gave great feedback on how she could improve, including writing down her introduction. It was clear she was more comfortable reading from a script than improvising. And that’s okay, especially when you’re new to this. Anything that puts you more at ease is good.

The other woman was scared, really scared. I could see the papers in her hand shaking even before she started reading. Twice during her introduction she struggled for control. When she finished, she apologized, but there was no need. The emotion wasn’t scripted. The emotion was real, and the first time her voice cracked, that audience was in the palm of her hand. You could hear a pin drop.

I told all of them over and over, “It’s okay to be nervous.” Everyone is nervous in front of an audience. They may not use that word. They may insist it’s adrenaline, not nerves. They may even lie about it. But being nervous means you want to do your best for your audience. It’s when the nervousness rises to terror – like the stage fright that stopped Barbra Streisand from performing live for decades – that you have a real problem.

I like giving this presentation. It calls on my directing and teaching experience and gives me a sense of accomplishment. It seems to help a lot when shy authors realize that the audience is on their side. Their readers want to like them and their books.

Why not give them a chance to find out about you and your talents? Because once they meet you and learn more about your books, they’ll be hooked.

 

For more information on this and other presentation topics, contact me at victoria@victorianoe.com.

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Release Day (Again) for Friend Grief and AIDS

I checked the calendar, so I know it’s true. It’s been four years since I published Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends. A lot has happened since then.

Some of the most recognizable people in the AIDS community, like Peter Staley and Jim Eigo, have become friends. I’ve attended AIDS conferences and meetings in New York, Chicago and Washington. I joined ACT UP/NY. I wrote freelance articles about the epidemic and won an award for one (2015 Christopher Hewitt Award for Creative Nonfiction). I make presentations about the epidemic and moral injury in long-term survivors. And I made a commitment to another, much longer book.

And though my life changed keeping the promise I made to my friend Delle Chatman in 2006 – to write a book about people grieving their friends – this book changed my life even more.

I’d backed out of the community in 1994, emotionally burned out. All of my energy was focused on my beautiful baby girl. In 2011, when Tracy Baim of Windy City Times asked me to contribute a piece to their “AIDS@30″ series, I wasn’t even sure I could remember my experiences. But I did remember – a lot. And not all of it was good.

Some of it wound up in this book. Some of it will be in the new book, Fag Hags, Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community. But the commitment I had in the dark days of the epidemic reignited four years ago.

Since it first came out, I’ve updated the statistics at the end of Friend Grief and AIDS. But this year it felt like it was time to do a little more than that. The second edition includes not only current statistics, but new resources and content. There have been developments in the community: PrEP, long-term survivor issues, women at risk, etc. And though I touch on them, there is much more to be learned and shared.

So today the second edition of Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends is on sale. For those who don’t remember the beginning of the epidemic, it’s a wide-ranging introduction to what made those days so frightening and infuriating. For those who do remember, it’s a small reminder of the hell we survived and why we continue to fight.

I was at an author fair at a library in central Illinois a year or so ago. One man looked at this book and asked, genuinely curious, “So what’s going on with AIDS? You never hear about it anymore.” So I proceeded to tell him about PrEP: that a pill had been developed that was 99% effective in preventing transmission. He was eager to know more, surprised that he hadn’t heard of this. But I knew for a fact that there were people living with HIV in his community, probably invisible to him.

So the fight continues, every day, in ways that are as dramatic as thousands of people marching in the streets of New York and as common as a one-on-one conversation in a rural public library.

That’s also why the sales of this book continue to benefit one of my favorite organizations, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. None of this “a portion of the sales” bullshit: 25% of your purchase price goes to them. And I’d like to write them a much bigger check this year.

You can find Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends on Kindle, Nook and Kobo (paperback next week). And I hope you’ll check it out. We have come a long way since the panic and paranoia of the 1980’s, but there’s still a long way to go. Get a copy for yourself. Get one for a friend. Because as we found out early on, when the government, businesses, religious institutions and even families abandoned the dying, friends made all the difference.

And they still do.

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Self-Care for Writers: Put Yourself First

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When I started writing, I was determined to not be afraid to ask for help. I’m sure I was beyond annoying, asking about conferences to attend, software to use, metadata. But there was one thing I did not ask about: how to take care of myself.

On the surface, one would think it’s unnecessary to do anything different just because you’re a writer. Everyone should get a decent amount of sleep, eat healthy, stay active. Writing is solitary and easily isolating, so social contact is important, online or in person. I asked a number of writers how they do it.

Environmental: Most surprising to me was that self-care to some meant the act of writing itself. They created an environment free of distractions – late at night or before dawn – where they could devote their energies to writing. They closed a door, turned off the internet, often when their families were fast asleep. Why? Because we all have responsibilities: family obligations, caregiving, jobs. The stress of trying to find little blocks of time during the day can cause deep frustration and conflict. Self-care for these writers meant creating an optimal place for creating. And whatever inconvenience a change in routine might cause, it was worth it to build in quality writing time.

They also recognized that there are physical spaces that affect our ability to write. For one writer, a noisy coffee house may be too distracting. For another, the play list at the coffee house may energize them. You may not realize you have places where the writing just seems to flow effortlessly, but if you think about it, I’m sure some will make themselves known.

Physical: A few talked about physical self-care: taking breaks to go outside and walk, meditation, exercise classes. All felt physical activity not only benefited their general health, but cleared their minds to return to their work refreshed and energized. I try to get up and move around for 15 minutes every hour. To ensure I don’t stay in one place too long, I keep food and drinks in the kitchen. I have no choice but to get up if I’m thirsty or hungry. Sometimes if I’m stuck or things are just not falling into place I’ll do something else for a while: clean, go for a walk, or just take a real break. Neuro-fatigue is something I’ve dealt with since my concussion eight years ago, so I can tell if my brain is getting overloaded. That’s when I know I have to stop right away.

Emotional: Sometimes it’s what we’re writing about that can ramp up the need for self-care. Memoir writers spoke of the challenges of revealing themselves in print, the internal struggle to be true to their stories without hurting others. I know more than a few who have reached a point in their book and stopped cold, sometimes for weeks or months at a time. They backed off because either the pain was overwhelming or they’d reached a moment they weren’t yet willing to confront.

“You’re not taking notes in a lecture hall,” a friend reminded me a few months ago. The people I interview for my books often become very emotional sharing their stories. I’d just told him about the nine women I interviewed the previous week and how three of them cried while they talked. And though I’ve never cried with them, sometimes it’s hard to shake off what I’ve heard. On days when I conduct interviews – especially those days with multiple interviews – I try to schedule nothing that evening or the next day. I need to be alone and quiet to process what I’ve just heard. I learned this lesson the hard way, so it’s one I’m not likely to forget.

Several years ago I heard Eve Ensler, who wrote The Vagina Monologues, speak at the University of Chicago. She talked about her work around the world to put an end to female genital mutilation. During the Q&A, I asked her, “What you’re doing must be emotionally draining. How do you take care of yourself?” She stared at me for a moment and admitted, “No one’s ever asked me that before.” She went on to talk about the importance of her posse, her female friends, in raising her spirits and energizing her.

Social: A lot of authors – most, I’m sure – rely on those around them. Maybe it’s family, maybe friends. Maybe it’s finding a group of writers who don’t get together to critique each other’s work, but meet regularly to share the ups and downs of this insane profession. We all need people to soothe and encourage us. And often that means people who will take your mind off of what’s frustrating you, if only for the time it takes to share coffee and a bagel.

The writers who shared their self-care tips were a diverse lot, but all shared one determination: to write the best books possible. Some learned the hard way that they needed to take care of themselves; others were already good at it. All knew the price to be paid for ignoring it.

“Put yourself first.” There’s a concept. That Nike slogan, “Just do it”, is often easier said than done. But those writers who keep plugging along have found ways to take care of themselves so they can. You can, too.

 

 

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Public Speaking for Shy Authors

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There are a lot of shy authors out there. They just want to sit at their computer and write. They might be willing to be active on social media, but the thought of being in public terrifies them. In fact, there’s a name for it: glossophobia.

It’s not that they have anything to be ashamed of: their books are good, even great. They have fascinating stories to share about their writing process, their travels and their challenges. But give a reading…in public..in front of…people? No way. Unless you’re J.D. Salinger, this is not a good strategy.

Several years ago I was at a writing conference. I grabbed a seat near the stage because I was excited to finally see this author in person. I’d been following him on Twitter for a long time. He’s one of those people whose tweets you actually look forward to each day. But I was in for a rude awakening. He was one of the worst public speakers I’d ever seen. He spoke from his notes in a monotone, head down, the entire time. Now and then he’d look up at the audience, as if to make sure we were still there. At first I thought it must be part of his act: that any minute he’d break out into a lively, funny presentation. But it didn’t happen. And I was stuck in a front seat for over an hour.

That experience – and a later pre-conference workshop on book readings led by Porter Anderson – convinced me that there were a lot of authors out there who need guidance.

On May 5, I’m making a presentation, “Public Speaking for Shy Authors” at The Muse and the Marketplace conference in Boston. It’s not the first time I’ve done this, but never before at such a large event.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a master’s degree in Speech and Dramatic Art. Over the course of my professional careers (writing is my fourth) I’ve taught workshops and performed to audiences of anywhere from a dozen to well over 2,000. I still get nervous on stage, but I’m not scared. And there’s a simple reason, one I hope every author takes to heart when considering doing a reading, reserving a booth at an author fair, or participating in a panel discussion:

The audience is on your side.

They are there because they want to be there. They’ve read your books or heard about you or have some interest in your genre or topic. They’re not there to harass you (unless they’re friends, because we all have friends who do that kind of thing). They want to learn from you. They want to like you.

Why? Because you have something to offer them: a book that can challenge them, soothe them and inspire them.

But, you insist, can’t I just do that online? Please? PLEASE??? Sure, but only to a point.

An agent once told me, “It’s hard to say no to someone you’ve met.” It’s the same way when your audience meets you. Once they’ve met you, heard you speak passionately about your writing, they will want more. Why wouldn’t they? I said before that I still get nervous. My nerves are because I want them to be entertained, I want them to feel that the time we shared was valuable. And that’s the best kind of nerves.

So this is what I say to authors who are terrified about meeting their readers and potential readers: Don’t be. They’re on your side. They want to like you and your books. And always believe that you’ve written something that could make a difference in their lives.

 

For information on this presentation and others related to my book topics, contact me – victoria@victorianoe.com

 

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The Grief That Takes You by Surprise

They seem to come in waves. You go for months, even years, when no one close to you dies. And then, bam: two or three or four in a matter of weeks. I remember a year when everyone I knew seemed to lose a parent, including me. But lately I’ve heard from several people who have lost a best friend.

“I’m angry,” insisted the minister in The Big Chill. “And I don’t know what to do with my anger.” These people feel a lot like that minister.

We expect those older than us – grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles – to die before us. But no one anticipates losing their friends. Some of those losses are normal: as we age, those around us will die. My mother is 88 and has few friends left. That’s to be expected.

I was 16 when I first attended a funeral for someone near my own age. It was a guy I’d grown up with, the older brother of a friend. He was in his early 20’s and was killed the first week he arrived in Vietnam. I remember sitting in the back of church as the procession slowly made its way up the aisle. For a moment, his casket was next to me, and I can still remember how my whole body tensed up at the thought of him in it.

His wasn’t the only funeral I attended of someone young, close to my age. There were a couple girls from my high school class. One died from cancer while we were still in school; the other in a car accident the summer after graduation. There was another guy I grew up with who was killed in Vietnam. Then things calmed down, until the 1980’s.

All around me, gay men I knew socially or worked with were dying of AIDS. It was a dark, frightening time, compounded by homophobia and ignorance. They seemed to disappear overnight. You’d see them and realize they looked thinner, even a bit frail. They complained of lingering coughs or fevers. And then…they were gone.

In the last fifteen years, most of the friends I’ve lost have died from cancer. Others, closer to my mother’s age, have died from heart disease. But the grief did not lessen, even if those deaths were a blessing after much suffering.

When I started the Friend Grief series, a Google search of the top 100 results (yes, way past the first page) for “grieving the death of a friend” yielded more for people grieving the death of a pet than a human friend. That’s changed, though pets are still a popular result.

Maybe you’re lucky. Maybe none of your friends have died. But someday they will. The first one will be a shock: the fact of it and your reaction. The next ones will not be any easier, I’m sorry to say.

You will be blindsided more than once by friends who did not want to share their illness outside of their families, and that will make you angry. The knowledge that it was their right will not make you feel any better.

So what to do?

You can’t avoid the grief that comes with losing your friends. They are a part of you, personifying different periods of your life. You are who you are today because of your friends. And that’s a very good thing, isn’t it?

All we can do, in the end, is treasure our friendships. Reach out in whatever way makes sense: email, text message, phone call. Get off your butt and meet in person for coffee or a drink. Plan a weekend getaway. Stop making excuses and make plans.

Because those people who just lost their friends would give anything to be able to do that again.

 

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