We all know that Litquake is fabulous. The best literary boondoggle in the country, bar none, with hundreds of authors at dozens of venues. The alcohol flows and the crowd is usually standing room only, and there’s a little sumpin’ sumpin’ for everyone, whatever your literary tastes. As an author, it’s the most fun reading I do each year.

But let’s face it, we’ve all been to those readings, at Litquake or elsewhere, with four or five or six featured readers, where each person is supposed to read for six minutes and some bozo reads for 15, or 20, or blathers on for half an hour. No matter how wonderful you are, unless you’re actually scheduled to read for half an hour, no one wants you to read that long! The audience is getting antsy, and the other authors are realizing that you think this is your event and nobody else’s. And when people talk about it afterward, they’ll be like, “Did you see so-and-so? I thought he was never going to get off the stage!”

So as Litquake gets off to a dazzling start this weekend, I offer the authors at Litquake this simple bit of advice from Morissey, from the song “Get off the Stage”:

As a verse drags on like a month drags on
It’s very short, but it seems very long…
So, get off the stage
Oh, get off the stage