Ah, blogreaders – I now know for sure and certain that, counted all together, you would add up to more than double figures. How do I know his? Because the disturbing gush of gannet-related items and communications has not abated, although I am now weeks away from the Ullapool Gannet Incident. (See previous post.) I can even pick out chums out from amongst their surroundings and other faces (I am not good at facial recognition) because my pals will be the ones imitating dead gannets. That, or spasming, staring and simulated wing contortions are all side-effects of swine flu and I have lately been chatting warmly to a number of infectious strangers. I do, after all, occasionally live in what we probably now have to call a Pandemic Hot Spot.

The decision to move the official swine flu description from epidemic to pandemic is, of course, interesting to a wordsmith. Epidemic suggests bodies in the street, plague pits and disease lurking in your cupboards and breathing-air. Pandemic sounds much worse, but is more about geography than numbers – although it's about numbers too. So an initial response to pandemic which runs, "Ooh Nelly, you mean we're all going to die? This morning? I must laminate my children at once." rapidly declines into, "Oh, just some people coughing in a number of different countries… right… So I can still sneeze on old ladies for a lark, then? And lick doorknobs?"

Medical language tends to be challenging – a word currently used as a shorthand for "If this problem doesn't kill you, we probably will". I still remember that I missed my grandfather by half an hour because I was unable to translate "quite poorly" into "could die at any moment". Not that I in any way lack admiration for people who spend parts of most days having to say (or obliquely hint) to other people that someone they care for very much will be leaving this earthly plane directly.

See? Hard to talk about death. Hard to say – "She's dead. He's already started decomposing. Her digestive system has begun digesting itself –as, eventually, yours will - unless you fall into a volcano or experience some especially unusual demise. Oh, and try to avoid those big, sucky in-breaths when you pass the crematorium."

Meanwhile, August is looming and so my director Iain Heggie (a fine gentleman) and I trotted out the show again for an evening at the CCA. Very pleasant and appreciative audience, although possibly the fact that the room was hot enough to vaporise lead may mean we are medically challenged in later life. This was the first time I've done the show in a space roughly equivalent to the one in Edinburgh and without a mic – so lots to think about and have fun with. It's been fascinating, working on my literal voice again for a while (in order to be audible and flexible) and seeing that work slowly have an effect on the "voice" on the page.

I've always been in favour of writers working with their voices. Although we are usually fugitive creatures, often grating (at best) in person and rambling of tongue – writers (especially poets) will almost inevitably end up reading their work in public for many pressing financial reasons. This will very often involve standing in a space specifically designed to make spoken-word events impossible and to irritate as many of those involved as possible. There will be noise, there will be atrocious sight-lines, there will be non-functioning mikes, there will be wild pigs in the foyer … you simply have to accept that nothing will run smoothly. Meanwhile, as the writer, you have to make the experience as nice as possible for the ladies and gentlemen (I never like kiddies to hear my versions of adult life in case they become disheartened and go all Tin Drum and stunted) who have turned out for the event – who may even have paid money for it to happen at them. This is not only polite, it's also deeply practical.

If a writer can experience their words being enjoyed by others, can make strangers laugh, or go "hmmmmm…" or sigh, or cry, or clap, or sit, alarmingly, with eyes closed in an attitude of profound concentration, sleep, or death – then the writer can feel more confidence in his or her words and move forward with them. This short-circuits something of that "playing alone with people you made up earlier for the benefit of strangers" aspect of the typing life.

Of course, a good reading style can partially conceal the fact that your writing is rubbish. But the aim would be to have your preparation perhaps lead you to reassess and improve your words, to have your desire to touch others enlarge your words, and then your presentation assist your words.

And if that all sounds as if we have passed briskly into the Enthusiastically Sticky zone of the Self-Love Continuum, then let us consider the dark side of the equation – the gangly young author trembles behind an unreliable lectern, his or her hands shake, pages fall to the floor, are scrambled after and then reassembled in the wrong order. There is an excruciating pause before his or her strangled voice stumbles dryly through a mangling PA system and manages to make shiny, lovely words into a numbing wash of social discomfort. Ten minutes are transformed into an ugly and debilitating lifetime, after which the author plods limply off to the sound of one hand clapping, vowing to never write again.

Which would be what we don't want.