Tag: Al Roker

12/8

The Shadow over Portsmouth: 58,555
Player Choice: 104,352

Confession time: I can have a difficult time with social interactions, including but not limited to public speaking.  I’ll focus on the speaking angle today, though.  Each speaking gig that I have takes a lot of preparation beforehand to get into the proverbial “zone.”  Writers today are supposed to be enthusiastic performers as well, sort of like how musicians today must tour and no longer have the option of just hiding in the recording studio.  It’s the harsh voice of economic reality.  If you write, you have to be able to talk about the book, to the media and particularly to eager audiences.

So I joined the local chapter of Toastmasters a little while ago.  I went to a few meetings to just check out the scene first, and I did a couple of brief, impromptu speeches, amazed in spite of myself at how easily my tongue would tie itself into knots.  When The Great Typo Hunt came out last year, my epic book tour included countless radio and TV interviews, including ABC World News, CBS Sunday Morning, and the Today Show (see below), for cryin’ out loud.  Yet I couldn’t come up with “someone I’d like to meet from history” off the top of my head, for God’s sake.  I guess I’ve always done better with prepared lines and canned points, which was largely what the Great Typo Hunt interviews were all about– well-practiced answers to the same questions over and over again.  I did a little acting in high school and college.  I can memorize a monologue.

But extemporaneous speaking– pretending like you’re a persuasive or at least interesting human being– that’s tough, man.  For me, it’s tough.  While we’d gotten a positive response from the audience for our Great Typo Hunt talk last month at the Wonderful World of Words weekend, and Will Shortz seemed to enjoy it, he still did mention that my delivery reminded him of Norm MacDonald.  It wasn’t what I was going for, but it did make me think.  Jane mentioned something about figuring out how well-known people with my type of dry speech use it to their advantage, which is something to keep in mind.  I know I’ll never be the most energetic communicator, but I could certainly settle for dryly funny.  It worked for Bill Murray, yes?

Side note: totally not feeling the Player Choice side of things tonight.  Think it’s time to abandon ship.

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Talking to Other Humans

I’ve been back in New Hampshire longer now than I was out on the road for the book tour; it’s been more than three months. And the distance from that adventuring time keenly manifests itself now in my interactions with other people. The other week, I attended a gathering of strangers and lost the nerve to talk to people, even in the interest of brazen self-promotion, which was the concern of most everyone else. At an early opportunity, I fled. O regard him, the man who gave hundreds of interviews, including at least a dozen on TV, who faced Al the Mad Roker, and who coolly deflected dick jokes from Australians and spoke in radio-friendly bites and learned to smile into a dark lens– ridiculous! Where was that calibrated persona now?

I’ve seen flashes of him in recent job interviews, perhaps because they more closely resemble media appearances than do ordinary conversations. Questions like “What was a recent work-related challenge and how did you overcome it?” are begging for a canned response and a shit-eating grin, wouldn’t you say? (Though occasionally there is the temptation to go off-script and say something like, “Hmm, in five years I see myself swaying gently beneath an oak branch.”) So now the goal is to take that glib bastard and apply him to more informal scenarios, where humans tend to meet and converse, the world somewhere outside the frosted windows of my Portsmouth apartment.

It’s been a womb of sorts, or perhaps a tomb. New England winter and cold tongues outside, while inside we have warmth and writing and my books and games, and Jane returning regularly to warm things still further (though not over this particular, particularly long weekend). Too easy to stay inside and let the Skill of relating fall dormant, while other Skills wax.

No more, friends! (I address this to the furry, stuffed friends lounging on the blankets.) To the outer realms once more I go, to re-remember what it’s like to be a certified member of the human race. I’ll gather my threadbare clothes about me, and name myself Writer, and I will be interesting and congenial and I will share stories and listen to those of others and occasionally steal them for later.

By the way, the bloom is off the rose for this WordPress app. Why should link pasting be so effing difficile?

Bamboo
One of the furry friends