How to be shy in public

I don’t enjoy being on a stage. I am naturally a shy person, so when the time comes to stand in front of a large body of strangers I get clammy, nervous and my heart races.

This week I was reminded of my disposition during the regular commute into the city, passing by Sheffield University busy with the undulating masses of students in their graduation robes. It was like “March of the Penguins” all over again…

…I graduated ten years ago, and it was a nervy experience sharing a stage with esteemed professors and Sean Bean (who was receiving an Honorary Degree from Hallam University at the time).
When I mean “share”, I mean having my name called out and having to dash across the stage, pausing briefly to shake the professor’s hand in front of several thousand people, while trying to stop the “mortar-board” from slipping off my head (I swear those things are designed for people with minute skulls). It never occurred to me that everyone else had to suffer the same process; I just didn’t want to be the one who trips over their gown, or whose graduation “hat” falls off and I end up doing a “Charlie Chaplin” – chasing my mortar-board across the stage…

…Ten years on, and I have changed somewhat. I still fear the “Charlie Chaplin” moment, and I still get nervous and sometimes clammy, but something else overtakes this fear: the requirement for self-publicity.

Writers are usually seen as either introverts or extroverts, yet through the media and from the desire of publishers, they have been forced from their garrets into public view. A book without self-publicity is usually a book no-one will read unless the publisher throws untold sums of marketing money at it. Macmillan New Writing is a publisher who cannot afford to throw those said sums the author’s way to get adverts for their new book in magazines, or on bill-boards. So the publisher gets the word out where they can; but more importantly it rests on the writer to provide the personal touch: self-publicity.

When I realised this - breaking that romantic tradition of being largely an anonymous entity and purely a name behind the writing - I got kind of nervous. You see, I don’t mind signing books or talking to strangers individually about my writing – it’s required. I don’t think an author must sign books, but they should. If someone is buying your book - investing their time, money and faith in you, it’s only fair that you should sign a copy if requested. And while it sometimes takes me by surprise, I quite enjoy the quiet attention it affords.

But when it comes to large audiences, that’s a whole other matter. I was nervous the first time I did a radio interview. Nervous even during my book-launch (though admittedly a few beers before-hand blurred the fear and my trepidation as much as it did the view of the 80 or so people listening to me). And I will be nervous when I deliver my talk at the Bakewell Arts festival on the 7th August. But as before, that fear will be overridden by the requirement for self-publicity, almost as though something else just “kicks in”. I go into another state – one that is divorced from me almost, as I speak confidently about my writing, about my book and the whole publishing process.

Yes, I’m naturally shy. But I’m also learning. Learning to put on a public face, trying not to let the attention get to me, while at the same time enjoying and being grateful when it happens.

In the end, for good or bad, it’s all part of being published in the 21st century.