Plea to the NY Times
A few weeks ago, I wrote about something I had never done before, attending a poetry recital. It seems that April is the month for firsts (pardon the pun, although it was intentional).
Yesterday, I had my first interview. No, not for a job, well, I suppose in a way it is – the job of author. My very first interview with a newspaper, albeit a local one and not the New York Times, but nevertheless an interview about me as a writer, and about my work.
I am absolutely thrilled, and at the same time, I am petrified. What if I sound like a complete idiot (people who know me will be saying 'no change there then')?
As soon as the first question was posed I had brain freeze. My normally verbose self was struggling to find simple words such as 'cat' and 'but'. The free thinking mind that turns thoughts into the printed word seized up. It felt as my mind was wading through treacle. Goodness knows what I have said.
So what brings about this change of state? If I knew the answer to that I would write a book and sell millions (I can see a theme developing here). It isn't the first time I've experienced it. At job interviews, I would be ready, calm and collected, and then at the first question my mind would take a tea break. Whenever I have had to speak to a group of people, a carefully rehearsed speech would disappear from my mind and my mouth would look like a fish out of water for a few moments. Yet if some random person asked me a question to which I knew the answer, I would be able to speak normally and coherently.
Actually I do know the answer to this one, stage-fright. Many years ago, when I had hair - lots of it, I used to play in a band. We would rehearse every week; we had everything down as we should. Then come the night of the performance, and the first number was shaky at best. After that we were fine and things went as rehearsed – mostly. We just had to get over those initial nerves.
So here is a plea to the New York Times. Don't tell me in advance about the interview, just call me one day and ask questions. You'll get much better answers.
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