The nice thing about speaking on a subject other than yourself is that you don't take it so personally if nobody shows up.
But about 25 people came to hear me speak at the library yesterday, which wasn't bad for a weekday afternoon. My subject was the Federal Writers' Project, though I segued at one point into a report on some of my own travels (how I did that I will reveal here tomorrow).
During the question and answer portion, one woman flattered me by saying how much she had enjoyed my travel stories in the newspaper. I told her my editors had not been as enamored of them as she had been, that I had been under increasing pressure to do more consumer stories. Personal narratives were considered useless, irrelevant, a waste of space. I'm proud I published them when the publishing was good.
