Considerations on Giving an Author's Speech

Next Saturday, I’ll be giving a talk at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History in Pacific Grove, California as part of the museum’s Author’s Speaker Series. I was asked to do so because I wrote a novel entitled, “A Portal in Time,” which is set in the area and contains historical elements in the story. Surprisingly, I was given no guidelines on what to talk about, but the museum’s public relations coordinator has read both my novels and thinks my appearance will be a mutually rewarding experience for all involved. In one sense, the onus is on me with regard to the subject matter of my speech, but in another, I am given the largesse of a willing audience and want to use the opportunity wisely. Here’s what I’m thinking as I consider my speech: it is my impression that anyone who makes a plan to suit up, get in the car, and attend an author’s event is interested in writing. They are somewhere on the path between quivering aspiration and satisfied fulfillment in a writing career, and therefore want to hear an author articulate their findings along the road to publication and then, perhaps, elaborate on the attendant writer’s lifestyle.
Now then, there are more organized speakers than I. There are those who would draft an outline and hit its notes in a controlled, perfectly organized cadence, but I’ve never been the sort to do well when boxed in. I need wiggle room and organic flow, even if I’m the only one talking. I need to feel I’m in a conversation as opposed to a lecture, that there are personal stakes involved in the spirit of a give and take forum in order to feel authentically involved, so that hopefully I can contribute something of value. Because I know this of myself, it is the manner in which I will show up at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History next Saturday. I will go to share notes on the rewarding struggle that has built my writing career, the push and pull dynamic that began with an intuitive whisper suggesting I could write something, that I should write something, for no other reason than the whisper wouldn’t go away and was starting to bother me in that way unutilized potential insists until it takes up square residency and sits heavily in the middle of your chest. For me, the act of writing is not so much blind ambition as it is the need to create. And maybe it’s not so much the need to create as the desire to excavate my impressions in this business of living and call them by name. Seems to me it’s a prompting worth doing for no other reason than I feel compelled, but writing is a lonely business and one has to be okay with being in it alone. Writing is also a reflective business much like going to a mirror each day, where you confront self-discipline and self-doubt, the tendency to measure yourself by who has gone before you, and the unsettling possibility of critical judgment, while all the while soldiering on because something within you must. As for the logistics of building a writing career, they’re another part of the puzzle well worth examining, but in my speech this Saturday, I’m going to expound on one specific element involved in a writing career, and, to me, it is the most salient.
In my opinion, if ever there were art for art’s sake, writing is it in its most exemplary form. If one is comfortable doing the task for its own sake, then I believe there are mysterious, uncanny forces that guide a writer onward in increments, until the sheer act of perseverance creates an undeniable body of work. When this happens, a writer is left holding the bundle and has to make the choice of what to do with it, keeping in mind that few writers ever definitively arrive, that there is no there to get to, and that there are only stepping stones along the way of what a writer should consider their life’s work. A writer’s career creates itself if one holds true and stays the course. It is alchemical magic, the result that manifests from making repeated offerings to the crucible of one’s own spirit via the written word and the bravery it takes to share.
Next Saturday, at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, I will strive to parlay writing’s intangibles, for I believe a writer’s career begins with awareness and is bolstered by an unnamed faith that urges a writer on. I’m going to keep my speech short and pithy then give the floor to the audience for questions, so that a give and take can ensue. I’ll answer from my singular vantage point, for I know I am just one amongst legions of writers, and no writer can speak for all. But I will be there giving my best, and look forward to the opportunity. Should you be one of the people to suit up and show up, I thank you in advance and look forward to meeting you. http://www.clairefullerton.com