Too Revealing? Oh, Well
Second class day at the Meredith Writers Workshop. This afternoon we held the faculty readings. The three of us–poet Betty Adcock, novelist and memoirist Nancy Peacock, and I–all chatted and read for about 15 minutes each to an audience of the combined classes.
I read the opening few pages of my novels Sister India and Revelation and told the group where the idea had come from for each. Well, that’s fairly personal. They now know a lot more about me than they did. I often wonder whether I’ve gone too far, offered Too Much Information. That’s probably true for at least a few people in any audience.
But I’m pretty much past actually worrying about it, which is a relief. Because once you start second-guessing what people in an audience think, you’re in for a lot of wasted time and energy.
I think a part of why I like public speaking is that trying to do it just right for everybody is so obviously impossible that I don’t worry about it and say what I want. It’s paradoxically freeing.
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Categories: self expression, speaking out