Writers and public speaking
I would guess that writers are mostly introverted people, happy to sit in their office tapping away at their computer creating stories, novels, poems, articles and whatever. Many shy away from the spotlight of public speaking. I believe that this is a narrow view of the writer’s life, one that is potentially limiting to their success as writers.
Writers need to be public speakers
As much as some writers might want to run from this suggestion, in order to promote one’s work the writer today needs to e a good public speaker. I have done considerable public speaking in other areas but very little in relation to my writing. Over the last 5 years I have had many opportunities to speak about Australian birds as a direct result of another blog of mine, Trevor’s Birding.
Prepare to be a good speaker
Joanna Penn on her blog The Creative Penn has written an excellent article on this very topic. Her article How to prepare for public speaking covers the topic really well. I recommend that you flip over there and have a read – or listen to her video. Excellent stuff.
Good writing.
Backup copies of your writing
A few days ago my son transferred all of my computer files from a positively ancient six year old computer to my new laptop. The transition took a while and was relatively painless. It would have taken me days to do what my son did in hours.
One of the topics we discussed during this process was the importance of having secure backup copies of all computer files. I don’t have to tell you how devastated you would be if you experienced what happened to a friend of mine.
He had been writing a novel on his laptop and this computer contained the only copy of this story. It was almost finished. He didn’t even have a paper copy or draft on paper. Some low life stole his laptop from his office and it was never recovered. Needless to say, he was devastated and took several years to get back to writing the story from scratch.
Always have backups of your writing.
My son has set up automatic backup systems of all my files. In adition, I will have copies on my stand alone USB drive. I am thinking of using DVD copies of all files, as well as on flash drives. They are now cheap enough to buy several of them and store them in different locations. Several years ago I copied all my writing files on to a CD and left them at my daughter’s home, some two hours’ drive away. This might seem overkill, but we live in an area where there is bush fire potential. We nearly got burned out five years ago so we are no longer complacent.
Good writing.