That was fun!

Invited to give a lecture on my writing and my Writers of the Future experience, I decided there wasn’t much need to talk about myself. Instead, I opened with the first four paragraphs of ‘Meeting the Sculptor’ (the first words out of my mouth), gave the briefest of introductions about who I was and how I got to be a writer; then I showed my audience the 21-minute documentary filmed at the Seattle WotF event in 2005, and after that embarked upon a 60 minute reading of the entire story. People gasped, squirmed, laughed and squeamed at the appropriate times, and only a few of them let show that they’d guessed the ending six pages ahead of me. Applause followed, a prolonged round of questions that served to inflate my already swelling ego, and presents, of course, to thank me for coming.

Although I’ve spent two Writers of the Future workshops in the States, this was, in fact, my first ever appearance as a writer in my own country. I’ve always maintained I don’t want to be a full-time writer because it’s a lonely occupation. Obviously, I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about… 😀