Blog No. 314
The last ChiSeries Windsor of the year took place last night. I’d like to say it was a smashing success, but (as I’ve said before) I write these blog posts early, for a number of reasons, and I don’t know how it went yet. I’m pretty nervous. Christian and I put a lot into this one (both time and some money) so I hope that the low numbers on the event page and the severe lack of people signed up to read were inaccurate indicators of what to expect. I hope we filled Phog to the brim and had so many people to read that we had to cut it short. I hope that all the extra effort, the time volunteered by the people we roped in to be judges, and the bumping of a regular Wednesday night musicians was worth it and we had the best ChiSeries Windsor yet! As I write this, I do not think that will be the case.
I’m not going to lie, the last few ChiSeries events have been a little disheartening. It’s been tough to get people to show up. We have some steady numbers, but that’s just because the readers we’ve had have been diligent in bringing people with them so far. You’d think a paid reading would draw out the authors, clamoring to prove that they should get a chance to read their work at a national reading series. Turns out, a lot of writers seem to be pretty apathetic. You’d think that other artists from other fields would come out to the recognized art-centric bar to support a reading series that pays its readers and musicians, supports local talent, and tries to bring in some guests from out of town. Some of the poetry readings I’ve been to have been jammed with people, but poetry is king in Windsor right now. We haven’t been so lucky.
I suppose people may have just not heard of it. We try to get the local news outlets to share the info. (So far, only Snapd and Windsorite.ca have posted the event in their calendar sections). We’ve printed posters and put them up around the city. We’ve shared the event online and told everyone we know in person (at least everyone I know in the city). We are both part of other groups and organizations and have personally asked for the other members to come out. This time we even had trophies made to try and entice people to take part. For the fundraisers (the end of the year event that this last one was) we open the door to genres outside of the prerequisite scifi, horror, mystery, speculative, etc. I don’t know.
I do know that the people who have taken part so far have been awesome. They have been supportive, enthusiastic, and helpful. There just arn’t enough people interested yet. I may be a real downer this week. The day job has really been taking its toll the last few weeks and the lack of enthusiasm for this event really got to me. Hopefully I can look at this post on Thursday morning and laugh at how mopey and pessimistic this post is (maybe I shouldn’t write them so early in the morning). If so, please disregard this whole post and pretend I was nothing but excited and confident. If not—well, Christian and I have had some conversations about how to shake this thing up a bit. Either way, this will be winding down my year for events. I may end up at a reading that Biblioasis is putting together. If so, I’ll eagerly spread the word, so you’ll hear about it. Either way, it’s about time I hunker down and start editing The Neon Heart. So, there’s that.
Ben Van Dongen 