Reading at a conference, terrified!

Post Reply New Topic

I'm meant to be reading a short story I've written at a conference in September and I'm so, so nervous. It's a conference about fairy tales (which is my main interest) and I've done a couple of research papers on fairy tales at conferences before which was scary enough, but this is reading out a creative piece which is really scary. No idea how to go about it, my voice is really boring when I read and I'm scared people won't want to listen or will get bored since I can't even use PowerPoint for visuals as it's a story I'm reading. Will post the story on here, any opinions would be really helpful! Thanks.

Fringe Child

Thirteenth child on Friday the thirteenth, born unexpectedly in the glimmering light of a full moon after the radiant, sun-filled day of Midsummer. She should have known then that her life was cursed; unwanted outsider thrown into a perfect, fairytale world, magic-bright with wands, spells and enchantments. Daughter of Night, the Sun scorns her; she drifts silently amid storytelling constellations, ghostlike in the unearthly moonlight.

Whispering waves crept up the glistening grey sand, edging higher as the sinking sun slipped golden beneath the horizon. Clouds of birds swooped overhead, scattering and buffeting in the evening breeze. Thirteen years had passed since she had left the town yet it appeared the same as she had left it; the regular rhythm of the sea calmed her thoughts in the same way as it always had, the same sun set over familiar waves and the buildings behind her seemed identical to the way she remembered. There was an uneasy feel to the familiarity; the dance of the waves seemed strangely ominous and she was suddenly aware of the vast depths of the water in front of her. Shivering slightly, Eris moved away from the sea and walked towards the town where she had grown up.
Lights twinkled ahead through the twilight like silhouetted constellations as she stepped up the path to the town, the glittering framework of her childhood. Butterfly memories flitted through her mind and a familiar sense of mingled guilt and longing crept through her once again, making her heart beat faster with a vague sense of nausea. She forced her mind blank, focussing instead on the brilliant outline of the Gothic church that dominated the skyline. The presence of the church characterized the town; without its imposing tower, the town would seem to lack identity, lights and buildings merging incoherently. Eris followed the path up the hill towards the church, drawn instinctively through the increasingly shadowed streets to the brightly lit building with high, stained glass windows and a tall tower leading to four intricately carved steeples. Each detail triggered a new memory; the timeless tower clock that ticked to its own rhythm, the colourful windows she had examined during countless carol services, each holding its own story. As a child, she had imagined herself in the legends and even now she could smell the animals from the stable, hear the distant angelsong and feel the terrifying wonder of anticipation. Christmas had always been her favourite time of year.

The chapel was locked as she approached its high arched doors and she stood in front of the stone building gazing upwards at the detailed carvings on its walls, intensified by shadows caused by lights shining upwards from the ground. The church itself seemed ethereal in the darkness, glowing golden in the now dark night, otherworldly. For Eris, time seemed meaningless as she felt the same awe she had felt as a child, the same sense of unity and unfamiliar acceptance that linked her to the world around her. Eternal minutes passed until the moment was broken by a sudden ring of the church bell. The familiar chimes jolted Eris back to reality and she turned away from the church back towards the town centre.

She was always different somehow; fairy dances alien to her as she tripped her way through their complex steps, her silver hair horribly conspicuous amongst the gilded manes of the other fairies. Her spells never worked the ways she wanted. No shiny gold stars shot out of her wand; instead silver speckles danced from its tip, hovering in the air in front of her, taunting her with their glittering sparkles. A willow wand stands out amongst pines; capriciously changing with the cycles of the moon amid constant evergreens.

Night had fallen now; shadows cloaked the streets with velvety black folds punctuated by the odd bright streetlamp. The darkness did not worry her. She could walk these roads blindfolded, knew instinctively the pattern of veins crisscrossing and winding to the heart of the town. She followed a narrow path down the darkened hill lit only by the misty moonshine above. Firefly lights glimmered in patches at the foot of the hill and the sky above was speckled with pinprick stars. Eris stopped and gazed upwards at the glittering winter sky. The Milky Way snaked though ink-black space. Orion, hunter’s bow ready, stood tall above the horizon, flanked by his hounds Canis Major and Minor. High above, heroic Perseus looked down on the Earth from his position alongside his heavenly wife Andromeda, both watching Eris intently. Stars murmured celestial stories, constellations gossiped to each other as the girl below starwatched intently.
As a child, the night sky had fascinated Eris. She loved the feeling of infinity, the nervous joy of oneness with nature itself, the fearful realization of nothingness and everything at the same time. She felt her own insignificance in the rhythm of the universe, thrills of fear and exhilaration fluttering through her chest. As she grew older, the stars revealed more of their secrets; she learned the legends behind the celestial patterns she had observed and the clusters began to take on an identity of their own, each with its own stories to tell and lessons to teach. The sky breathed with life; characters hid behind dusty clouds and the moon gathered millennia of stories during its nightly voyages. Sometimes when the sky was especially clear, Eris would stand outside and stare at the constellations for hours, watching their steady journey across the heavens, nervously excited by the illicit feeling of staying up late on a school night. Yet other teenagers did not share her passion; whispers snaked around her during school hours and awkward silences punctuated her conversations. Quirkiness is not an asset in a teenage pack and the starstruck sky was more interesting to Eris than famous superstars, the tales hidden within its patterned depths intrigued her more than the affairs of people she had never met and she preferred the songs of nature to popular music. Eris looked away from the stars above and continued down the path towards the glittering lights below. From far away, the constellations watched apprehensively. Stories echoed from heaven to earth, reverberating through the darkness like a warning.

The town sighed with sleep as Eris entered the dimly lit roads leading to its centre. Shadows danced around her beneath sentry streetlamps and distant television sets murmured from behind closed curtains. She followed the road towards a smaller church and walked down a path through its graveyard. The only sound she could hear was the rustling of leaves beneath her feet; the silence echoed in her ears and darkness shivered around her. The stillness was unnerving; shadows slipped behind gravestones and trees arched overhead, blocking any moonlight. Eris walked quickly towards a gate on the other side of the churchyard and stepped through. The difference was immediate; she stood the lit entrance to a park. She crossed the car park and walked towards the shadowy fields on the other side.

She tried not to care, laughing at herself, making jokes along with the other fairies. But laughter is a parasite, needing others to feed off. Alone, shadows tormented her, the lonely paradox haunting her thoughts: not wanting to be with other fairies, feeling alone in their giggling droves yet dreading the long, lonely hours at night where time is trapped in shadowed boughs and darkness seeps from the eternal night. The moon mocked from above; cold colourless rays shafting through contorted branches. She longed for a group, somewhere to belong, but the fairy-world doesn’t have a part for outsiders, neither good nor evil, floating without purpose in between worlds, caught in a web of fringe-world mythic space.

Silver moonlight illuminated the park with an unearthly sheen and diamond frost glistened on the grass, creeping up tree trunks and coating their skeletal branches with ice. Ghostly swings swayed to a silent beat; the river rippled steadily downstream. Each crunching footstep seemed to echo through the silence, breaking the natural rhythm of the night. Spectral recollections of numerous nights and days spent roaming the park filtered into Eris’ mind and she paused at the edge of the field, looking around her. Early morning runs through the crisp winter dawn, mild summer evenings reading on top of rusty skate ramps, innumerable timeless hours swinging through childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Impulsively, she ran across the frosty field towards the swings and slides fenced off by ice-faded coloured railings. Ignoring the futile sign ‘For the use of children under the age of 12 only’, she pushed open the gate and entered the play area.

From the moment her feet kicked frosted wood chippings and her gloved hands gripped icy iron chains hard, time seemed immaterial. Linear structures whirled in spirals around her mind and she swung weightlessly to the same cyclical rhythm that governed the world around her. At once a part of Nature and separate, she moved through eternal space, high towards the skies and feet brushing the earth. She swung higher and faster, trees merging in dark rainbows of branches until she could touch them with the tips of her shoes. After several timeless moments had passed, she slowed the tempo, allowing the swing to slow gradually until she could jump off into the waiting wood chippings. Nothing in the park had changed; within its ageless, timeless vicinity lay childhood, adolescence and adulthood, cycles repeated year by year, generation by generation. Eris followed the footpath out of the park and up the narrow, wooden steps to the road once again. The golden glow from the streetlamps cast a daylike light to the road as Eris walked along the pavement. The road bridged across a river and she stopped once more, looking downstream at the medieval castle shining through the darkness down the river, reflection rippling on the surface as though an illusion.

Each dawn, she watched the sun creep over the horizon, glowing golden in the early morning mist and blushing the clouds pale peach. One morning, two doves flew over the horizon, wings glinting in the honey light. They brought news to the fairies from the kingdom: a princess had been born to the King and Queen. The fairies swarmed to the palace and the thirteenth fairy watched from far away, entranced by delicate baby beauty. The day of the baby’s christening came and the King called forth twelve fairies to cast gifts of blessings on the sleeping princess, the thirteenth forgotten, abandoned still in her own inadequate otherworld. She watched from afar, jealousy biting snakelike, creeping into her consciousness, emerald scales with bright, ruby red eyes that sparked angry fires raging inside her. Wand in hand, she flew to the castle, fire flashing in her wake, smouldering ash. Hammer-heart thumped, adrenaline pumped, glowing fiery scarlet in the pastel room.

Eris stood against the stone walls of the bridge, gazing at the castle. It rose majestically through the gloom, golden ramparts guarding
against unknown sieges and a single turreted tower standing watch down the river. St George’s flag hung in the still night air, stark against the black night. As a child, she had barely noticed the castle as she walked across the bridge each day apart from the obligatory school trip and history lessons, yet now the sight filled her with awe. Each stone brick held a story; a millennium of history seeped from every rock. Eris remembered the long-told legends of knights and kings who had walked the halls of that same castle and now, looking at its shining splendour through the darkness, she could picture vividly the scenes that took place; the violent thirteenth century sieges where enormous trebuchet catapults had flung cannonball rocks from hundreds of metres away, opulent feasts with food-full tables laden with dishes for royalty, the secrecy-shrouded dungeons that had seen countless executions and treachery. She shivered as she imagined the ancient ghosts who haunted the castle’s walls, and as her gaze shifted upwards, she saw once again the winter watch of timeless constellations who witnessed history cyclically.

Moving on from the castle, Eris continued to follow the ghost road towards the centre of the town, the same route she had taken every school day for fourteen years. She felt a strange feeling of anticipation, as though waiting for something to happen. The road led steadily downhill towards the town centre and she walked automatically, hardly pausing to think. The quietness of the street was disconcerting; at any moment, she half-expected hordes of schoolchildren to pour out onto the deserted pavement yet no-one came. For the first time that night, Eris began to feel alone; shadows taunted her beneath harsh streetlamps and the darkness pressed around her as she walked more quickly. She stopped suddenly in front of a familiar building, her heart prickling with sharp stabs of needless guilt and nausea swirling her stomach.

A row of shadowed classrooms stretched down one side of a playground, ghostly in the haze of darkness. Empty chairs and desks stood in neat rows in front of blank whiteboards and the playground was deserted, flanked by uniform trees. Eris stood at the gate staring into the school grounds, myriad memories churning inside her. Night time at school had always intrigued her; she remembered exploring empty classrooms on school play nights once her part was over, the faint excitement of contraband activity and fear of hidden alarms. She had never come across any though and she felt even now the thrill of the familiar become strange and of new discoveries. School for Eris was ambivalent; naturally erudite, she loved to learn and the distant scent of knowledge and discovery still drifted through the brick walls but she had always felt alien, distant from others her age, sitting on her own during lessons and hiding in the library at break. Her friends came from fairy tales and mythology; as a child she flew to the ice-bound kingdom of the Snow Queen with Gerda and felt the rush of adventure and anticipation as the little mermaid visited the human world for the first time. She could still feel the sharp snap of cold on her face while journeying through the snow and hear the distant rush of the Snow Queen’s sleigh carry Kai further into her kingdom. Fantasy mingled with reality as she grew older and Eris gradually took on some of the characteristics of the characters she spent so much time with; the cold, detachment of the Snow Queen and the vengeance of the Sea Witch.

The twelfth fairy paused mid-spell, looking up. Thirteen years of anger shot flame-bright from the thirteenth fairy’s old, scorned willow wand. Before the end of her thirteenth birthday, she will prick her finger on the needle of a spinning wheel and will fall asleep for a thousand years. The fairy vanished back to her exiled world, lost to others. She does not feel shame. She is not angry. She exists in a dreamworld, go-between, floating aimlessly, moonlit spirit.

Eris’ heart beat fast at the memories and she looked away quickly to halt the slow spread of longing and guilt through her chest. She was no longer a part of the school routine, no longer welcome within the wooden boundaries of learning and security and she hated it, hated the people who judged and shunned her and hated the artificial structure and customs. Regret is a dangerous beast; unchecked, it grows uglier and deadlier, morphing and twisting until a draconic monster surfaces, unrelenting and vindictive. Eris’ eyes shone scarlet through the darkness as she reached into her bag and pulled out a golden apple, intricately inscribed with variations of the same symbol- two arrows pointing towards each other, their heads joined. Silver moonlight danced on the patterns so the apple that appeared alive with chaotic energy. Reaching back, she hurled it hard at the window of the nearest classroom and ran as fast as she could away from the building, down the still-silent street and back towards the sea. Her feet pounded the ground and her heart beat to the same rhythm, the regularity calming her thoughts, false order through chaos. As she approached the sea once more, she slowed down and walked towards the waves rippling up the silver sand.

The setting moon shone diamond-bright in the sky. An icy sea breeze wrinkled the calm water in front of her; false mirror-moon mocking from its shifting surface. In the sky above, Perseus looked down on the girl carefully. He who knew her history was unable to act, bound by his celestial state, and could only watch, powerless. Around him, starsong filled the sky with heavenly gossip as rumours and stories flew from constellation to constellation. Far below, Eris stared out to sea with blank, unseeing eyes. The rippling rhythm of the waves filled her being and time seemed meaningless as she stood in the eternal night, bound in the cyclical rhythm of the universe. Task complete, she turned away from the water and walked dreamlike towards the hills and the train station. As she waited for the first morning train out of her hometown, she looked around the landscape for the last time. The opal moon faded imperceptibly into the paling sky as the first hints of pink stained the clouds above the hills. Faint flakes of snow drifted from above, each delicately unique. As the train left the station, Eris did not look back. Nothing can come from nothing; false order leads to disorder. Every action has a reaction, equal and opposite. Stories echo through eternity.

Oddly enough, I'm terrified of meeting new people and socializing, but I have absolutely no trouble with public speaking.

There are a couple of recommendations that I can make to help you get over your fear.
1) Since you'll be reading a creative work, you can abandon a lot of the rules for public speaking.
-You don't need to maintain eye contact with your audience. You can just stay heads-down in your work and just read. You can completely forget about them and it's completely appropriate.
-Don't worry about keeping your tone, pace or volume controlled. Emotion is your friend now. Let it guide your delivery.
-Over-emphasize what you feel or what you felt while you wrote it. You are sharing a part of yourself and you physically can't do it wrong. Just be genuine
2) Get a microphone and a tape recorder/digital recorder or use your PC to record yourself. Turn down the lights, set up a podium for yourself and read the work as you would to your audience (important! The closer that you get to how you'll be standing and presenting, the easier it will be to fall into that memory when you're actually up there). Try to be as "over the top" as you can be and to read as slowly as you can. Most speakers tend to go full-speed and monotone when reading. It's *very* hard to ever be too expressive, enunciate too clearly or to read a peice too slowly (especially when nervous).
3) If you find yourself losing cadence (the rythym of the peice), don't be afraid to put lines or marks where you would naturally pause or breathe. It can help you to pace yourself and to avoid any stumbling blocks.
4) When you listen to the recording, Follow along with the peice and feel the cadence and tone. The words are less important than the feeling. The words are on the paper and will be there for you when you need them. What you want to burn into your memory is how the words make you feel. Ignore the quality of your voice. It will always sound weird to you because it's coming from outside of your head. I'm sure that even Morgan Freeman thinks that his voice sounds weird when he hears it.

The idea is to establish a flow in your (for lack of a better term) muscle memory. When you get up there and look down at that paper, you want to forget that you're in front of an audience and just be immersed in *your* feelings of the story. Like I said, you're sharing a part of yourself and they're all there to hear you do that. It simply isn't possible for you to do it wrong.

Good luck! You have some very expressive material to work with and I think that you'll be amazing!

Thank you so much for the advice and feedback, that's really helpful. It's the emotion side I'm nervous about- don't usually express emotion and trying to read expressively in front of a lot of people I don't know is a bit intimidating, although I think it'll be less scary than if I knew the people. Those tips are brilliant; thank you again!

I agree with you as I find it so much easier doing stuff in front of audiences I dont know.

The taping thing is really really useful to me, and for me I would practice a talk quite a few times.

Then I leave gaps of a day or two and it sort of trickles into my memory (I dont mean so I know it by heart, just so Im confortable with the process)

I also find it helps to go over something before I sleep.

I know it easier said than done, but you got to try and enjoy it, for yourself.

I've gone from feeling sick with nerves about these things to throroughly enjoying it, by doing it for me. No-one in the audience really matters, I dont know them. This takes the pressure off and I do a good job.

Part of the problem may be that you're thinking about the "right" or expected way to express the emotion. I know that I don't express a lot of my emotions because I learned that they're confusing to other people. They're often misinterpreted or "inappropriate". It's not that I don't feel anything. Quite the contrary. I have very strong feelings and passions. But that the connections and triggers can often be "atypical" as are my ways of expressing them. It's easier to just adopt a Mr. Spock stance and keep them under control.

People don't write like you do without *feeling* emotion, so just focus on bringing *that* feeling out and worry less about how people will see or percieve it. You're very lucky that you get to present your own work. All you really need to do is cut through your own filters and not worry about anything else. Nobody can have any expectation of what's right or appropriate because it's all just you. This is one of the few social situations where people will want and expect to see a piece of you. Let yourself be vulnerable and just be yourself. These opportunities don't come along often enough.

I had an opportunity to publically read some poetry that I wrote a few years ago. and I dropped the filters and I was sure that I made a complete fool of myself. I was stumbling over words, getting choked up with emotion and generally felt like I was falling apart. However, afterwards I had people come up to me and tell me how moving it was and that they really felt like they had connected with me. That's a pretty rare thing

You're going to be amazing and your audience is lucky to have you as a speaker!

Thank you so much again for the advice. You're right about the emotion- it's not so much that I don't feel it but that when I do, it's too intense and I can't always express what emotion it is and I think that's why I'm nervous about reading it in front of people, especially sine they'll have a chance to ask questions at the end and I don't know what to expect. Not sure if I'm comfortable with an audience 'connecting' with me, had a bit of a weird experience last week when a woman I know through her kids hinted at AS and I ended up telling her about it, was a relief to be open with someone (I don't have an official diagnosis although it was brought up by a psychologist and I don't usually tell people) but felt a bit strange.

Your poetry reading sounds like it went really well how many people were you reading in front of? I find poems a lot harder than prose, still don't really know what a poem is in order to write one!

The poetry thing was only for about 30-40 people. It was something that I was asked to do by a friend who was organizing the event. It was the first time outside of high-school/college where I had presented something personal rather than something professional. Oddly enough, I accepted just out of habit. As I've said, I'm very comfortable speaking in front of groups, but I hadn't really realized that I was going to be reading something personal rather than going into "professor" mode. I had a lot of the same concerns that you do. At that point in my life, I was just "weird" and not an aspie. So, it was even more concerning to me that I'd be creating a lynch mob that would chase after me to stick me in a straightjacket

What surprised me most of all is that people weren't expecting conformity. They almost wanted the "weird" because it made for a more interesting experience. It's an opportunity for you to be who you are. It's completely up to you whether you let that connection flow both ways. You also have an "out" with anyone that knows the public you. If the "you" on stage doesn't match their normal perceptions of you, they'll assume that the on-stage person was the act and just part of the reading.

As for the questions, you have complete control over that. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying things like "I'm not really comfortable answering that" or "I prefer the reader to come up with their own interpretation". Don't be a slave to the questions. You can shut the emotional door once you're done with the reading and fall back into your normal public persona. It may cause the audience to do a little double-take, but it's not uncommon for a reading to be very passionate and the Q&A to become very clinical and objective.

I know the feeling about thinking people will come after you with a straitjacket, i'm a bit nervous about the audience's reaction (I'm not an 'out' aspie). I'm really worried they'll find it boring though, I know it seems a bit monotonous since there's no real plot or characters, and no dialogue. Hoping that the questions will be easy to understand though, don't want to look really stupid or 'freeze' and not be able to speak. Really looking forward to listening to other people's talks though, fairy tales has been my 'main' interest since I was little.