I found these thoughts super interesting from my position as a producer at public radio -- i.e. I make my living by writing and editing words that are meant to be heard, not seen. It's a completely different skillset, no question. And it takes a long time for people to get used to that skill, I've found, from my time training newer producers and reporters. I always encourage everyone to read everything they write out loud, one paragraph or thought at a time, and if you have to take a breath in the middle of a sentence where there's no "natural" punctuation, or if you trip over a word or two, you should start cutting. Or you can also try just talking through what you want to say first, recording and transcribing that, and then cleaning it up. But the idea is to spend more time talking out loud, even to no one, and less time fine-tuning sentences on the screen and only leaving the "performance" of it as the last step.
Sooo interesting to hear! And yes, this is why the "Splendid Table" experience was so formative for shaping how I write to speak and why it's so different from my writing-writing. I kind of wouldn't want to blend the worlds because I see them as such different things. It's also why I didn't really want to read from my book while on book tour. An interesting thing is my next book will be more of a book that lends itself to that, by relying less on heavy research and citation. I'll have to figure that out when the time comes!
Thank you so much for giving us these insights. I relate to so many of them and they're such good points!
The "public speaking" I do is live storytelling ("The Moth"-type shows) and it's so different from writing. Sounding too "rehearsed" is no good, you don't want it to be a PowerPoint presentation when it's supposed to be a story. But you also don't want to lose your way and fumble the beginning-middle-end of it all. So it's about being prepared but not...sounding prepared. HARD. Like writing is, but in a different way!
I could NEVER do what you do—that’s so fascinating!!! In academic spaces, too, I think there’s more room to lose your way, but I personally can’t deal with that (lol) so I need to be rigorously prepared. I would love to read about how you approach storytelling live vs. in writing!
It me. It's taken me a hundred years to cultivate an articulate and (so I am told) interesting writing voice, but stick me in front of an audience or shove a camera in my face and I go mute. The worst part is that when I hone my words on paper, I work toward a conversational, speaker-ly voice. I wish I could call that same voice up when speaking, but it evades me. The one exception is when I am *teaching* a subject I feel confident in, where I am mysteriously able to converse at length like a normal person.
Yes, I need to be so desperately prepared in order to feel comfortable—which is a good thing, to some extent, and it’s why I can easily talk about my book, but hilariously when people ask me to speak about my “career,” I have no clue what to say. I also think people expect, because we write for big audiences, that we’re thus comfortable speaking for the same—it’s not the case! Normal conversation eludes me most of all! 🤣
Andrew I have the sort of opposite problem, which is when I'm in front of an audience/camera/podcast person, I talk TOO much. (Nerves, I guess? Fear of dead air? IDK.) It's like my Shitty First Draft of a piece comes out of my mouth, live. Horrifying! I need to learn to edit in real time as I speak, basically. Lol
not fun, I bet! I wish I could edit in real time, but it takes me about 37 versions of any given sentence to get the right thoughts down. I do know that once I have written about something at length, I can usually talk about it pretty fluently.
Came across "inchoate" today and realized I never commented, to say SAME.
Really enjoyed reading and thinking through process with you in this! I found a teaching style that fit early on, so I've had fifteen years of practice using power points as loose outlines to give lectures (with discussion components). And after too many academic conferences where academics read straight from their paper (written in a research voice, NOT a speaking voice, and it's clear they aren't thinking about that *at all* in their presentation), I sort of swore to never read from a paper for a talk. I'm always best with visuals (usually power point) as a structure/guide, so that's my go-to, but there have been a couple times I've tried to just do an outline (like notes written out, a few choice sentences I make sure I want to say) and it's been....not good at all. I think your method is very audience-centered and generous (in terms of the time you put into prepare), and I'm sure translates brilliantly in person (I've enjoyed reading your talk transcripts too!). Really interesting to reflect on!
Ah, I love hearing about your style! I definitely try to do the speaking in an engaging way even if the writing doesn’t work out that way on the page (to me). I love reading talks writers give that seem to be their voice but blustery (was re-reading Virginia Woolf on jobs for women recently) but am still figuring out my style. I’m likely teaching again in spring ‘25 so I have time to work on it—I like the idea of a PowerPoint with notes! I just know how I talk myself into a 🌀
I am not confident in giving a speech, even though when I start speaking I eventually enjoy it, as long as I had time to prepare the speech, write it, and read it aloud multiple times!
I am more used to record podcasts, and just like you in this case I try to avoid words with a difficult pronunciations and too many asides!
When I started as a grad student, my advisor complained that my public speaking voice was monotone and lost my lively personality. I worked hard on presence rather than content and watched how other people lectured. I remember with awe when an undergrad prof, who turned up with the wrong lecture, was able to totally wing our lecture on reproductive nutrition without notes. It was a mesmerizing lecture, too.
I much prefer improvising than preparing a full lecture or talk, as I never found my speaking voice on the page. Generally, I make a rough outline and use PowerPoint both as a guide for my audience and as cue cards. I agree that writing on the page differs from speaking.
I wish I had the ability to improvise but that will never be me! Simply too anxious. I at least think my ability to read my personality into my own work helps it to come off dynamically, and I usually insert questions when lecturing to break it up.
it's like you've reached into my brain and pulled all of the stuff i've been wanting to say about the way i approach writing for my newsletter! really loved this - thank you!!
This was so interesting! The writing v speaking distinction/differences, your experiences (and history), and aim(s), with both. It was very illuminating.
I was also terrified of public speaking in my youth - and when I got to grad school and had to do some teaching (those poor poor undergrads), it was very challenging. I started out pretty much writing out my lectures and basically read them… while trying to look like I wasn’t just reading stuff lol. It took time to build confidence speaking in front of people, especially when I began presenting papers at academic conferences. That was really scary, certainly at first (‘valium would have helped that bash’).
By the time I became a prof, omg: I was still writing out lectures, still trying (even harder!) to appear as if I was ‘just talking’. But as I tried to become more extemporaneous, to trust myself, I realised my writing had gotten better through it all - in a kind of reverse process, it became more like talking to the reader, even in my academic papers. (A reviewer once wrote, quite critically, that I sounded like I was talking to the reader - and I was pleased.)
Sorry, I could go on and on (the corporate lab years: Power Point World!) Your essay here really hit home, I could see exactly what you went through, what you try to do when writing and giving talks, and why. You write so damn well, Alicia. And the text you shared of your talk (Bates) had the feel of you ‘just talking’ (not lecturing) to the audience. Wish I had been there.
Jack, always so nice and reassuring to hear of your experiences! I’m glad I’m starting to come through in my talks—I think I’ve internalized a lot of freelance restraint, the need to be whatever I’m needed to be at the moment, and it can be more strange to be given the leeway to always be myself. I hope next time I teach I can feel a bit more free! You give me hope.
Even with a degree in English (attained over the span of 18 years while I was, umm, working), I still have to look up the word “inchoate.” Every. Single. Time. 🤦♀️
I found these thoughts super interesting from my position as a producer at public radio -- i.e. I make my living by writing and editing words that are meant to be heard, not seen. It's a completely different skillset, no question. And it takes a long time for people to get used to that skill, I've found, from my time training newer producers and reporters. I always encourage everyone to read everything they write out loud, one paragraph or thought at a time, and if you have to take a breath in the middle of a sentence where there's no "natural" punctuation, or if you trip over a word or two, you should start cutting. Or you can also try just talking through what you want to say first, recording and transcribing that, and then cleaning it up. But the idea is to spend more time talking out loud, even to no one, and less time fine-tuning sentences on the screen and only leaving the "performance" of it as the last step.
Sooo interesting to hear! And yes, this is why the "Splendid Table" experience was so formative for shaping how I write to speak and why it's so different from my writing-writing. I kind of wouldn't want to blend the worlds because I see them as such different things. It's also why I didn't really want to read from my book while on book tour. An interesting thing is my next book will be more of a book that lends itself to that, by relying less on heavy research and citation. I'll have to figure that out when the time comes!
Thank you so much for giving us these insights. I relate to so many of them and they're such good points!
The "public speaking" I do is live storytelling ("The Moth"-type shows) and it's so different from writing. Sounding too "rehearsed" is no good, you don't want it to be a PowerPoint presentation when it's supposed to be a story. But you also don't want to lose your way and fumble the beginning-middle-end of it all. So it's about being prepared but not...sounding prepared. HARD. Like writing is, but in a different way!
I could NEVER do what you do—that’s so fascinating!!! In academic spaces, too, I think there’s more room to lose your way, but I personally can’t deal with that (lol) so I need to be rigorously prepared. I would love to read about how you approach storytelling live vs. in writing!
I may have some live storytelling shows happening this summer and that might get me feeling compelled to write such a piece! Thx <3
It me. It's taken me a hundred years to cultivate an articulate and (so I am told) interesting writing voice, but stick me in front of an audience or shove a camera in my face and I go mute. The worst part is that when I hone my words on paper, I work toward a conversational, speaker-ly voice. I wish I could call that same voice up when speaking, but it evades me. The one exception is when I am *teaching* a subject I feel confident in, where I am mysteriously able to converse at length like a normal person.
Yes, I need to be so desperately prepared in order to feel comfortable—which is a good thing, to some extent, and it’s why I can easily talk about my book, but hilariously when people ask me to speak about my “career,” I have no clue what to say. I also think people expect, because we write for big audiences, that we’re thus comfortable speaking for the same—it’s not the case! Normal conversation eludes me most of all! 🤣
Andrew I have the sort of opposite problem, which is when I'm in front of an audience/camera/podcast person, I talk TOO much. (Nerves, I guess? Fear of dead air? IDK.) It's like my Shitty First Draft of a piece comes out of my mouth, live. Horrifying! I need to learn to edit in real time as I speak, basically. Lol
not fun, I bet! I wish I could edit in real time, but it takes me about 37 versions of any given sentence to get the right thoughts down. I do know that once I have written about something at length, I can usually talk about it pretty fluently.
Came across "inchoate" today and realized I never commented, to say SAME.
Really enjoyed reading and thinking through process with you in this! I found a teaching style that fit early on, so I've had fifteen years of practice using power points as loose outlines to give lectures (with discussion components). And after too many academic conferences where academics read straight from their paper (written in a research voice, NOT a speaking voice, and it's clear they aren't thinking about that *at all* in their presentation), I sort of swore to never read from a paper for a talk. I'm always best with visuals (usually power point) as a structure/guide, so that's my go-to, but there have been a couple times I've tried to just do an outline (like notes written out, a few choice sentences I make sure I want to say) and it's been....not good at all. I think your method is very audience-centered and generous (in terms of the time you put into prepare), and I'm sure translates brilliantly in person (I've enjoyed reading your talk transcripts too!). Really interesting to reflect on!
Ah, I love hearing about your style! I definitely try to do the speaking in an engaging way even if the writing doesn’t work out that way on the page (to me). I love reading talks writers give that seem to be their voice but blustery (was re-reading Virginia Woolf on jobs for women recently) but am still figuring out my style. I’m likely teaching again in spring ‘25 so I have time to work on it—I like the idea of a PowerPoint with notes! I just know how I talk myself into a 🌀
I am not confident in giving a speech, even though when I start speaking I eventually enjoy it, as long as I had time to prepare the speech, write it, and read it aloud multiple times!
I am more used to record podcasts, and just like you in this case I try to avoid words with a difficult pronunciations and too many asides!
When I started as a grad student, my advisor complained that my public speaking voice was monotone and lost my lively personality. I worked hard on presence rather than content and watched how other people lectured. I remember with awe when an undergrad prof, who turned up with the wrong lecture, was able to totally wing our lecture on reproductive nutrition without notes. It was a mesmerizing lecture, too.
I much prefer improvising than preparing a full lecture or talk, as I never found my speaking voice on the page. Generally, I make a rough outline and use PowerPoint both as a guide for my audience and as cue cards. I agree that writing on the page differs from speaking.
I wish I had the ability to improvise but that will never be me! Simply too anxious. I at least think my ability to read my personality into my own work helps it to come off dynamically, and I usually insert questions when lecturing to break it up.
it's like you've reached into my brain and pulled all of the stuff i've been wanting to say about the way i approach writing for my newsletter! really loved this - thank you!!
This was so interesting! The writing v speaking distinction/differences, your experiences (and history), and aim(s), with both. It was very illuminating.
I was also terrified of public speaking in my youth - and when I got to grad school and had to do some teaching (those poor poor undergrads), it was very challenging. I started out pretty much writing out my lectures and basically read them… while trying to look like I wasn’t just reading stuff lol. It took time to build confidence speaking in front of people, especially when I began presenting papers at academic conferences. That was really scary, certainly at first (‘valium would have helped that bash’).
By the time I became a prof, omg: I was still writing out lectures, still trying (even harder!) to appear as if I was ‘just talking’. But as I tried to become more extemporaneous, to trust myself, I realised my writing had gotten better through it all - in a kind of reverse process, it became more like talking to the reader, even in my academic papers. (A reviewer once wrote, quite critically, that I sounded like I was talking to the reader - and I was pleased.)
Sorry, I could go on and on (the corporate lab years: Power Point World!) Your essay here really hit home, I could see exactly what you went through, what you try to do when writing and giving talks, and why. You write so damn well, Alicia. And the text you shared of your talk (Bates) had the feel of you ‘just talking’ (not lecturing) to the audience. Wish I had been there.
Jack, always so nice and reassuring to hear of your experiences! I’m glad I’m starting to come through in my talks—I think I’ve internalized a lot of freelance restraint, the need to be whatever I’m needed to be at the moment, and it can be more strange to be given the leeway to always be myself. I hope next time I teach I can feel a bit more free! You give me hope.
Even with a degree in English (attained over the span of 18 years while I was, umm, working), I still have to look up the word “inchoate.” Every. Single. Time. 🤦♀️
I recently heard a critic say it on a podcast and was like “oh you’re at that level ok” — will never be me! 🤣