This weekend, I travelled to London to attend the International Alternative Press Festival. It was truly great in terms of conversations and connecting with people who are either doing the same indie stuff I’m doing or who ‘get’ it and want to support it. The challenge is that, yes, this may be my tribe, but most of them are hungry artist types and thus the price-point of my works was a bit high. (Eighteen quid for a blank book or twelve for a novel, versus a pound for most of the zines on display.)
The second day I managed to sell a lot more. Why? Who can say? Maybe Sunday browsers in London are better-heeled. I also took a bunch of the cheap stuff off my table, because I realised the throwaway, loss-leader things like wallets and bookmarks were downstage centre, distracting from the things I really want to be selling. Having two zines gave me items in that price-range that were in keeping with what I’m about, so I’d definitely create more of those.
Financially, I think I made back about twice my travel costs, which is good, but London is so bloody expensive and there are so many neat things to see and buy that I couldn’t help spending a lot. So that was a failure of a sort, so thank heaven that I have a day-job to make the money question somewhat immaterial.
Ultimately, the exercise was about getting in front of people, and on that count it was a big success. I’m all about two things: creating works from my imagination, and showing other people how they can do the same for themselves. I connected with some new readers, and had a lot of really lit-up, exciting exchanges with really engaging people at my table about how they could make books and publish themselves, or about the brilliant work they’re already doing.
In short, I spent time with my tribe, sometimes as a leader, sometimes as a peer, and that’s a good thing for me to do — especially given that I live so very far away from the cultural centres where these things happen on a that scale.
I also got to stay with some very generous relatives and visit with new-ish friends whose company I am really digging, and on my last night I went to see a show at the Globe theatre. Much Ado About Nothing is a wonderful play to start with, and the cast were fantastic, but what moved me to tears as much as anything was that visiting the Globe was, for someone who trained as an actor, like visiting Mecca. All those long nights in the theatre, all those classes with teachers who were just about exploding with passion for the craft, teaching us how to be committed, viable artists — that was an important time in my life that shaped everything since. I’m glad I got to do that.
Lately I’ve been feeling that I’m not just a writer, I’m an artist who happens to specialise in words. But there are other things I can do, have done, and I’d like to find a way to…
…Well, to do everything. I suppose this is the challenge of a mortal life.