Tomorrow I’m off to the Philippines to host a presentation and workshop in Manila for SCBWI. Surprising to say, although I’ve overseen many such events given by other writers and artists here in Tokyo, I’ve never actually guested at one myself before. Prior to this the longest I’ve ever spoken for was 15 minutes in Paris a few years ago, as I’ve never run school visits either, this will be for all intensive purposes a debut speaking engagement (in English at least). I’ve spoken in Japanese before in casual critique classes I’ve run at art schools in Tokyo, which was a hell of a lot easier to contend with. Somehow speaking in a foriegn language buffers you from the nerves of your own native tongue, giving a presentation to English speakers is a lot more nerve-wracking.
Nevertheless this Manila workshop has encouraged me to think about my work processes, and I’m hoping to reuse the presentations in future events. I’ve never used Powerpoint before, I opened it up for the first time to put together two slide shows, one on the artists that have inspired me from Hogarth to Errol Le Cain, the second on my own work. I thought I’d be able to pull something together within a few days – in fact with the scanning of artwork and research involved it’s taken me three weeks, for two 1.5 hour talks and a 2-hour workshop.
I just hope I don’t turn into a jibbering jelly on the day.