My presentation

As part of a training course last week I gave a short presentation on writing and my experiences in trying to sell my work. The topic would not normally have been my first choice, as I tend to bore people when I talk about it, but we had to talk about something we knew about and my other interests were all fairly well represented in the group. Represented by people who were more knowledgable than myself, I have no doubt. With writing, I was fairly confident that I could bullshit if I had to.

It went pretty well. Grudging as I am to admit it, the training guy's advice on presentation skills helped me quite a lot, and I almost enjoyed it.

By far the most surprising thing though was discovering that of my audience one person had written stories in the past, but didn't know what to do with them, and another had lots of ideas, but had never thought it was worth him putting them to paper. Both said that I gave them a few ideas about what to do next. It'll be nice to think I've encouraged them to write and submit. I've done all I can do (short of standing behind them singing 'Go Paul, Go Simon! Go Paul, Go Simon!'), but it would be nice if I saw their names in print somewhere down the line.