Timed to Talk? - Lucy Coats

I'm warning you--this post may sound a bit OCD.  That's because, where giving a talk is concerned, I am obsessive-compulsive.  Take the recent SCBWI 10th Anniversary conference (written about here recently by Ellen Renner).  I was asked to be on one of their new 'Pulse' panels talking about 'How to Sell Your Book' way back in the summer when November seemed a long way off.  I said yes, of course, though I'd never done a panel talk before.  After all, how hard could being on a panel be?  There'd be at least two other people on it, if not three...and it would mostly be audience questions.  Wouldn't it?

Jon Mayhew, Sarah McIntyre and Lucy Coats in action on SCBWI Pulse Panel

And then the instructions arrived. 'Give an 8 minute talk', they said.  That's when I started obsessing.  Because I'm someone who likes to get it right where talks are concerned. 
Really right.
Perfect.

So I wrote the damn speech (let's not mention the time spent doing the PowerPoint which went with it here--that's a whole other story).  Then I got my kitchen timer and my stopwatch (one counts up, one counts down--no room for any error of timing there, then).
Now pause for a second and imagine the mad authory person striding up and down the her office, declaiming to three long-suffering dogs.
Oops!  The beeper goes off. 
There is still a lot of stuff to say.
The damn speech must be cut.
And cut again.
And snipped still further.
Time must be squeezed till it fits.

After hours (yes, hours) more cutting and striding about I have something which runs between 7 minutes 44 seconds and 8 minutes 15 seconds depending on declamation speed.  It is not absolutely and exactly perfect (this, worryingly, worries me--I did warn you), but it will have to do. Perfectionism can only go so far.

There's nothing worse than a panel speaker who rambles on and on, going over their allotted timeslot and messing up all the other panel members.  That's why I give thanks for my talk timing OCD. It means I'll never be one of them.  The dogs still think I'm mad--but that's a price I'm happy to pay.



The Nearly-Perfect 8 minute Speech



Thanks to Nicky Schmidt for SCBWI conference photos

Lucy's website is at http://www.lucycoats.com/
Lucy's blog is at http://www.scribblecitycentral.blogspot.com/
(Shortlisted for the Author Blog Awards 2010)
Lucy's Facebook Fanpage is at http://tinyurl.com/lucycoatsfacebook
Lucy's Twitter page is at http://www.twitter.com/lucycoats