I didn’t think I’d be able to, but I made it through reading a piece of mine without my voice cracking. I wrote it just over a year ago, and it was the first piece I had submitted for a creative nonfiction contest. It’s a personal piece and also written in the first person. It was the first time that I have been able to read the piece aloud without my eyes welling or stumbling to voice the words I’d written about a traumatic experience that changed my life forever. When I wrote the piece, I thought it may be the end of my novel but through my online writing group’s reactions to it; the story seemed to fit well as my opening. It sets the tone, and I was so nervous about reading aloud in front of people today for my IRL writing group. I had read them my prompt submission for the month and they wanted to hear more.
So, I mustered you the courage and said: “I’ll read you my opening.”
I wondered about revealing the reality of the story, but then felt I’d made a great first step in reading it publicly for the first time. And it’s not a topic I want to talk about, so sometimes it’s better to keep the origins of stories to myself…