Seacoast History Blog # 124 
August 8, 2011

- Tuesday August 9; Newcastle Historical Society, 7pm 
- Thursday August 11, Portsmouth Rotary, noon 
- Saturday, August 13, Discover Portsmouth Center, 11 am 
- Saturday August 20, USS Albacore book signing

Nothing makes a writer shudder more than a week of talking in public. If it seems to come naturally, then the masquerade works. So imagine my surprise to find I’m the guy at the podium all this week. And it’s a killer combo. Two of the chats are extemporaneous and the third is the kick-off of this year’s latest slideshow lecture. Let me tell you how that happens. (Continued below)

In the book writing biz they call it your “platform.” The platform is everything the writer does to get in front of the public. The goal is to become a household name so that, when your new book comes out every year or two, people buy it. The writer’s platform includes his Web site, his public lectures, his column in periodicals and newspapers, and whatever publicity he can muster on TV, radio, Internet and print.

Every hour the author spends on that platform, of course, is an hour not spent writing books. So the platform itself needs to provide its own income, and maybe more than most, I’m rabid about doing my level best in speeches, columns, Web pages, and the like. This probably dates back to my years as a high school teacher where I always felt that – if the kids took the time to show up for class – then they deserved a kickass lesson. No, it probably dates further back to when I was a sickly little kid and, to prove I wasn’t a total disappointment to my parents, I worked my little heart out painting plastic monster models to earn their praise.

Anyway, this year’s dog-and-pony show is a slide lecture entitled “Who Won the War of 1812?” It’s designed to match the bicentennial of the War of 1812 that begins soon, and to accompany my next book, that is supposed to appear soon. But thanks to my obsessive nature, I think the show has to stand on its own.  If 40 people show up, that’s 40 hours of their collective lives, actually more like 80-100 if you count their drive-time, the Q&A, and the cookies after.

So I put in a solid week of designing slides for each show. And, of course, like a penitent in a hairshirt, I never take the easy route. Instead of Powerpoint, I build each slide by hand in Photoshop. I find it gives me more control of the fonts and imagery and the slides look vivid and different. I build 150-200 slides per show. Some are photos or illustrations, but many include titles that take a dog’s age to create onscreen.

My slide projector is 10 years old, probably older, but it is a beautiful machine. To get the images into the machine, I have to go through a harrowing process. Each JPG has to be copied into proprietary software that is positively Neanderthal. They have to be uploaded chronologically one slide at a time. Then the show (called a “scenario” in this software) has to be transferred to a compact flash disk. The disks that fit the machine are so old that you can’t buy them in any store. If the computer or a thunderstorm crashes during this operation, all may be lost. I always mean to add video and audio clips, but the learning curve is too steep.

There is a heart-stopping moment when I push the ENTER key and wait to see if the file will upload to the disk. Then there is another when I slide the disk, a square thing about the size of a matchbook, into the projector and turn it on. Then, of course, I fret about the life of the projector bulb (about $300 each), and the life of the battery in the remote controller, and the length of the electrical cords and the sturdiness of the table at the venue. I worry about the size of the crowd, the hours of the show, the dimensions of the screen, the acoustics of the room, the weather, and more factors than I can name without you thinking I should be on medication.

If the speaker gives the same show maybe 10 times, at current rates, it pays for the process of building the presentation. Do it 20 times, and you begin to see a return on the investment. That’s how it goes in the book writing biz. You build your platform. Then you climb onto it like a condemned man. You stand boldly in front of the audience and you hope – you pray – that you don’t hang yourself in the process.

If you can hear the applause, then you’ve lived through another one. You pack up your slide projector and your unsold books. You grab a cookie or two for the road. Then you go home, kiss the kids goodnight – and work all night on the next book until the birds sing.

© 2011 J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.