I don’t often get the opportunity to speak in front of large groups of people. On Tuesday, however, I was invited to be the speaker at our local Kiwanis Club meeting. I was thrilled to be invited, but at the same time, terrified. I could just feel my legs turning to jello as I walked into the meeting. Now, this is obviously some twisted psychological thing that had absolutely no reason for occurring. These people are some of the nicest people I’ve met and it was not a threatening situation at all. For some reason, though, my brain decided that it was time for me to be absolutely petrified.

I had scripted out this wonderful speech about how I had chosen to be a writer after years of doing what others considered to be “the right thing.” It was actually pretty good. I read it to myself a few times before the meeting and even recorded it so that I could do the whole playback thing to make sure I didn’t sound stupid. To my surprise, I didn’t sound stupid on the recording, but when it came time to do the speech, I froze. I couldn’t even read the words I had written. So, I did what any self-respecting author would do, I made it up as I went along.

As it happens, everything was fine. I was the only person…until this moment…who knew that I hadn’t stuck to my script. The group asked some great questions and I think I gave pretty good answers in spite of my anxiety. And although it scares the hell out of me, I’d do it again.

Until next time…