From Writing to Speaking

This week I'm supposed to do a spoken version of my story that was accepted to the Antipodean SF website, which is going to come out in their October issue.

This thing (reading aloud) is not my forte.

It's not like I've never done this before. Heaven knows I've read enough bedtime stories to kids, and I actually did do a reading of another short story on YouTube years ago, just to try it out. I just don't feel like I'm terribly good at it. So there's a little mental block there for me.

I decided to listen to the podcast they do, to see how other authors read their stories.

And I found out they do a sort of radio show, that's really on the radio. They paint a lovely little romantic word picture of it on their website:

"The AntipodeanSF Radio Show is broadcast in the Nambucca Valley, on the Mid North Coast of NSW every Saturday evening at 8:30pm EAST, on community radio, 2NVR, 105.9FM."

So I had to take a quick Google Maps trip.

It's a small spot in Australia, on the beach facing out towards New Zealand. I clicked along Pacific Highway, and stopped for a moment to dangle my legs off the pier in Pelican Park and pulled in for a moment at the Nambucca Motel, with its painted brick and its signature cactus with a sombrero on it.

I tried to imagine the entire population of the Nambucca Valley (all 6,222 of them, or even if only 3% show up, that's still a good 186 people!), seated around their radios on a Saturday night at 8:30 in October...

Listening to me, reading out my story.

I'm in awe.

Neil Gaiman gave some advice to another author once, when she asked about reading aloud - "Pretend you're someone who can do it, and then just do what they would do."

Works for me. Tomorrow I'm going to pretend I know what I'm doing, and do it...I hope...