Book Sanctuary

As mentioned in my last blog post, the Linlithgow Book Festival is running from 29-31 October. This week Book Sanctuary had the excellent news that we can be associated with the ‘open mike’ evening, a free event that gives writers an opportunity to read their writing to an audience. The organisers, and the compere for the evening poet Andrew Philip, are kindly allowing me to spend a few minutes talking about Book Sanctuary.

Which brings me to the subject of this post, public speaking. For anyone who read some of my earlier blogs, it’ll be abundantly clear that some things make me nervous, mostly anything that involves meeting strangers. I previously discussed the nerves of meeting future classmates at University, and now my year of social discovery is taking me onto speaking in front of an audience, even if it is just for a few minutes. It’s the speaking part that unnerves me, because I have a track record of performing reasonably well in front of an audience while performing music. But giving a presentation with just the power of words is something else altogether. The source of these nerves? It’s just me, just my character. I’m hopeful that as a grown up I will finally be able to take this into my stride; surely I haven’t developed from a shy, nervous young boy into a shy, nervous young man!

Still, I’ll do it anyway. Not only is Saturday a great opportunity to speak to people about Book Sanctuary, but a chance to ignore the introverted devil on my shoulder and take on my nemesis, the microphone. If a nervous breakdown ensues, I’ll document it in the next entry.

Until next time, all the best,

Thomas