Wednesday 17 August 2011

Storytelling (4)


Been resting for days to be okay for some storytelling today at 4pm at the Edinburgh Book Festival. *I like how the banner photo makes me look like I was standing - I was sitting and managed to kick a glass of water over during the reading, naturally.

I'm very proud to be doing this wee ten minute book fest slot today. Take note, Wessely school: people with this illness do everything they can to achieve, in spite of it all!!! (Just realised am shelved above James Joyce, that makes me smile.)

I feel like a bad citizen. My library books are overdue - can't renew them online as others want them - but I've had to measure out energy like gold coins and am not certain I'll get them back by the end of the week.

12 comments:

Andrea Pring said...

That's wonderful news, NMJ!

nmj said...

Thanks, Andrea, for your kind words. Lovely to have a platform for my voice - three whole years after TSoM came out. HarperCollins sent up some books for the festival shop, always thrilling to see them lined up like this! I just hope some book tourists - there are visitors from all over the world - take a risk on a writer they have probably not heard of. TSOM will bring them into a world they never knew existed. ;)

nmj said...

And the writer's yurt was lovely too. My first time in there, a hallowed spot! So cosy and relaxing with its carpets and cushions and the rain battering on top.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/aug/15/edinburgh-book-festival-yurts-nicola-morgan

I have that weird ME/adrenaline thing now where you are shattered but all neuro-jangled too and can't sleep. I went to bed and got up again.

greenwords said...

So excited for you, hope it was wonderful.

sylvieromy said...

Fab-u-lous!

nmj said...

Thanks, greenwords and sylv, it was gorgeous and lovely experience - the writer's yurt is an oasis, I want to live there! - but am totally shattered today. I think I sound a bit frail in the audio clip - diffident even - prob a mix of nerves and co-codamol... I think I prefer my feisty self in the What About Me? promotion clip which I have recently reinstalled in my sidebar - after Wesselymania week, I felt the need. Sylv, don't know if you ever saw this. Double D Productions were going to partially dramatise TSoM at one point but it fell through, though I am still v pleased to have the teaser trailer for reference.

http://vimeo.com/10536172

Hope you are both doing okay, my dears.

nmj said...

...though I'm pleased I made the point in wee interview that my story Parched actually originated ten years ago. That is what is so lovely about writing, you can always go back - the writing is always there even if you can't/don't finish it at the time. Nothing is wasted.

Amy said...

So glad it went well. I was thinking of you and cheering you on.

Just read your stories. They are wonderful x

nmj said...

Thanks, Amy. I said elsewhere - i think - The Bangle Man was my contribution to the fundraising anthology 50 Stories for Pakistan in 2010, and Parched was in my former uni's online lit magazine - From Glasgow To Saturn - earlier this year. Nice to see them together like this. I am hardly prolific, but every little counts ;)

Katy said...

I thought Parched was beautifully understated as a story.

I wanted also to say thank you for writing The State of Me - it's perfectly pitched: witty and warm, so appealing to a wide readership, but also communicating the reality of living with ME. A really good read.

PS Have you seen Jim Jarmusch's film Coffee and Cigarettes. It's a series of vignettes; various people meet over coffee and cigarettes. Lots of shots of people drinking from cups and playing with them! Reading Parched, I thought you might like it.

nmj said...

Thank you kindly, Katy.

I did see Coffee & Cigs a long time ago, hazy now though, Tom Waits is in it or does the music?

Digitalesse said...

I listened online and enjoyed reading the stories ... and hearing your voice! Well done!