Neither quite went as planned. I think my story went down well - it felt good as I read it - but it proved incredibly difficult to engage listeners who were just passing by. I'd spent hours on the story itself, and almost as many making posters and leaflets to hand out to attract an audience. But on the day, posters and leaflets weren't what was needed - I did have delightful listeners, but it was Facebook and friendship which brought them along (and the sterling work of the ReAuthoring team who brought me to Whitstable and looked after me there).
The one exception was a man who came in to the pub for a drink and (foolishly?) sat at the table next to mine - so I simply went up and asked if he'd like me to tell a story. Not at all what I'd planned, but it worked - he looked really thrilled at the end, and we had a great conversation about why stories and poems mattered to him.
Leap forward to yesterday. The GB cycling team had a plan - they'd deliver Mark Cavendish to the finish and he'd sprint over the line, just as he did in the Tour. Only it didn't work out - a load of other cyclists took the initiative and vanished into the distance, leaving the perfectly planned GB team out of the action.
We cheered anyway, and hoped till the last minute that they'd pull it off - but in the end, it was the guts and risk-taking of Vinokourov that won out and took the gold medal.
I'm off to LV21 in a few weeks to tell another story, and I'm determined this time not to plan it all to the last detail - I'll leave some ends untied, maybe, see what happens on the day. This time I'll be confident that my story will thrive no matter what the audience does. What's the worst that can happen, after all?
I love the idea of being told a story like that. I wish I'd been in Whitstable! And what an exciting thing to do as a writer. Hope the next one goes well!
ReplyDeleteIt was really interesting writing a story to be told rather than read, and writing it to be told in a specific place added an extra dimension. Though this was the story of the 1287 flood, I was aware that there are plenty of people in Whitstable who well remember the east coast floods of the 1950s, which were just as devastating. I felt hugely responsible for the effect of the story on its listeners - it felt important to get it right. Possibly that's why I prepared so thoroughly, possibly too much, leaving little to chance - and why I so much enjoyed the liberation of actually telling it and seeing that it worked as I'd hoped.
ReplyDeleteSO true Sarah! It takes huge nerve to offer stories to complete strangers, but you rose to the occasion marvellously.
ReplyDeleteI loved, within your fiercely cut tale so softly told, the waves of repeated situation and circumstance and suffering and release: the tale enacted upon us. Lovely.
ReplyDeleteBy chance, I just read RL Stevenson's The Bottle Imp, which has in common the doomed protagonist looking to hand on that doom to the next; and for the reader, unexpected release in these dark eddies.
Thank you Will - you've made me glow with happiness. And to be compared to RLS! I've downloaded The Bottle Imp forthwith, and look forward to reading it by candlelight tonight ...
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