Choices from Voices

The voices weren’t mine. The choices were.

My story begins a few weeks back. A guest speaker invitation arrived from Elie women’s group. The topic? My writing – Fiction, Non-fiction and Poetry.

Interested eyes

What do you see when you speak to an audience? Curious eyes, that’s what. Confidence helps.

What a lovely welcome. With an interested and interactive audience, I had a lot of fun. The time flew by with humour, pathos and repartee… not forgetting a murder or two. Killings seemed to go down quite well in this genteel company … as did a smidgin of lovemaking.

Great conversation

One I’d sung for my supper it was coffee and treats. The warmth of my second reception was great and I found myself talking to interested readers. Several of my conversations started with a person telling me she had purchased and was reading, or had read, one of my books. Oh be silent, my inflating ego! There’s nothing like a spot of egoic inflation to lift feet from the safe anchor of the ground.

My audience didn’t know about my secondary mission.

Mission implausible

Some weeks before I enjoyed a meeting with a movie expert. He gave me a couple of hours of pointers on script writing. An insightful remark got me thinking of how beneficial it would be if I could actually get a couple of actors to work with me and for me to hear my draft work read aloud.

Lo and behold I found a thespian on the night. And she, in turn, enlisted another performer to work with me.

Barely a week later we met and accomplished two readings of the script over coffee and cake. (Way to go!)

Simple gratitude

As a writer, I’m at least creative if not exactly an artist. Listening as two fine people read my words … both caring enough to invest energy and meaning into them, is a gratifying experience. I learned a lot, but that’s another story.

We read so much about the horrors of our world, and not enough of the gentle and helpful kindness of our fellow human beings … even for scribblers.

© Mac Logan