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Invitations proliferate; time evaporates. But if you start declining invitations, invitations start declining. You will rightly feel that you are hurting your chances for your work to gain a wider audience.
If you want to keep working though, you must set limits. It's as if an invitation were a chocolate gelato--good in small bites, bad as a stand-in for leafy greens. Determine the number of talks you will give per year, the amount of money you will charge for a talk, the number of pro-bono presentations you will give per year. If money starts coming in, even in moderate sums, consider employing a part-time assistant to help you plan or to just plain help.
I'm not famous. Still, on some days I get interrupted so incessantly you'd think I'd won the Nobel Prize in Literature. My best help with this problem of distraction and interruption is my intention to get four uninterrupted hours of work per day. The goal of time on the job--the job being the creative work itself, not teaching, answering email, sending work out, applying for grants, or other related tasks--is what keeps me on course. And make no mistake. I am looking with deep envy at the routine of three morning hours and three afternoon hours set up by Chuck Close (and also by the ultra-prolific Joyce Carol Oates). For now, given my other responsibilities, I am usually getting four hours. My timer is my taskmaster.
As your work begins to gain more attention, it's useful to pay attention to how you want to present it, and to how you want to present yourself in public. As an artist who is visible, what is it that you want to convey? What values do you want others to take away? What do you want to say and what do you want to model about art and about making art? When you serve as a public figure, whether on the radio or in the classroom or in a live performance or at a gallery opening, you stand for art--for the particular form of art you make, as well as for all art. That's a responsibility.
It may be helpful to take a class in acting or in the Alexander Technique, a body alignment practice developed originally for performers. I've done both and both helped me overcome my original stage fright. There are improvisation classes, classes in performing, classes in public speaking.
Look for model creators, past and present, who are visible in the culture, artists you admire. What can you learn from them by way of comporting yourself as a public figure? One I stand in awe of is Twyla Tharp as interviewed (on YouTube) by Norma Kamali. Check it out (youtu.be/atGJkkzVe54). I'm looking at Tharp's posture, her thoughtful and erudite responses, her dress, her lack of stuttering and stammering, her sincere and extremely professional presentation and the quintessential brilliance of the content she presents.
