Last edited Wed Jul 5, 2023, 06:14 AM - Edit history (1)
I'm currently in a two-week writing workshop and last week we could sign up to read one of our works on Sunday afternoon so I had signed up as a personal challenge because one of my biggest fears is public speaking and I had never done this sort of thing before. Because the workshop is for "serious" writing, I had a dismal little literary story all ready to go but Saturday I decided to use a sweet, crazy little sci-fi story about post-apocalyptic elephants instead because it's one of my favorite stories. All the other readings were poems or excerpts of longer fiction but my story was a complete tale that could be read in 4 minutes and 19 seconds. It was a minute longer than the literary story so there was more pressure because each reading had a hard stop at 5 minutes.
I practiced all day Saturday, and each time I practiced, I screwed it up, saying the wrong word in places even though the correct one was right there on the page before me. (Why does that happen?) The story has three elephants of different ages and I practiced using a child's voice for the young elephant and an elderly voice for her grandmother, just because that was more fun. But as I drove to the venue, I decided to just read it straight without the voices to reduce some of the pressure of embarrassment. I just wanted to get this over with.
It came my turn and I went up to the podium and read the title, paused, and started the reading. I was so scared that I just pushed through the story, desperate to get to the end so I could sit down and wallow in my embarrassment. I guess my practicing took over because I found myself reading it with great drama, doing the voices anyway (I couldn't stop myself) and I didn't screw up a single word! There was big applause at the end and the moderator who introduced each reading commented that my story was a beautiful example of classic storytelling.
When the readings were done, I raced to the men's restroom but it was full and I had plenty of nervous pee to get rid of but there was an "all-gender" restroom on the same floor so I tried that and the last of five stalls was empty. When I emerged from the stall there were four women, college students, standing at the sinks, smiling broadly and saying how much they loved my elephant story. The next day during a workshop break, one of the more prestigious students, a bestselling author in a different workshop, stopped me in the hallway to say how much he loved my story and told me that it could be used as the beginning of a longer piece, maybe a novel.
So I learned that if your great fear is public speaking, the antidote is to make sure you love what you're reading and to practice, practice, practice. Like a first responder in a dire emergency, your training will take over.
Mine was getting a call from my sister in law from Boston. It cheered me up.
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