I've been called a born teacher. As the eldest of three children, I constantly taught my sister and brother, and anyone else who would pretend to listen to me. The acting thing worked for me too, but I eventually staged other performances as a junior high teacher, university lecturer, teacher trainer, corporate trainer, creativity coach and workshop presenter. I love to do it and consider myself a pretty darned good talker. I can get up in front of hundreds of complete strangers and talk/teach, thoroughly enjoying myself. Over the years I've trained people to overcome their fears and the number one horror, fear of public speaking.

Sure, not all my public speaking gigs have been stellar or terribly enjoyable. Sometimes it's just hard work. Back in the day when I was a research project director and teacher trainer at UNLV in Las Vegas, I moonlighted for a training corporation out of Utah. Once a week I'd teach Rapid Reading for the Professional, a spin off of the Evelyn Woods method majorly reworked according to my reading specialist and curriculum development training, at a local government office building. At 6:30 p.m. a busload of accountants and engineers would arrive at my classroom from the Nevada Test Site where they'd been toiling at who knows what since about 5:00 a.m. that morning. They were dead tired, hungry, and did I mention they were accountants and engineers--the most difficult sort of ultra-careful and conservative personality in the world? Getting those guys to relax and let go of their creeping, dogged and iron grip on each individual printed word to up their reading speed and comprehension was HARD if not impossible. I had to trot out my best dog and pony show to even keep those guys awake. Thank goodness I was young, cute and damned determined! In any case, it all worked out great and I can report that ALL of them increased their performance and eventually had a good time, too. The company I worked for was so jazzed at their documented increase in performance that I was asked to train their other instructors on my method. Yeah, I'm bragging. But it's important to always remember the wins, the good times because the really horrific ones can easily make you forget them and focus on the negative.

A writer friend of mine, B.L. Morgan, who writes the famous John Dark horror/thrillers, has a new series coming out later in the fall. To promote his new book, he decided that he'd appear at a local open mic. And here's his really DARK public speaking tale:

I went to the open mic night on Friday night and well, I probably better just describe what happened. I do gotta say that you did warn me about who I let read my stuff and I guess that includes who I read in front of. Anyway here goes:

I went to the open mic night at a local independent bookstore. Anybody who knows my short stuff knows that I write extreme horror and that I pull no punches. I took with me a story that's named Life And Death In The West. It's a post-nuclear war story that built up to an ending that is really devastating. I know it's strong because it appeared in SavageNight (an ezine that's now long gone) and I got a lot of good feedback. It's STRONG!!!

After I listened to the first few poets read I decided that this just wouldn't be the crowd to do L&D for but out of politeness I was going to hang around and listen. I know how bad it makes someone feel when someone gets up and leaves in the middle of what they are doing.

The woman who organized the thing approached me and asked my name. I told her and she wrote it down and I told her I wasn't going to be reading that night. I explained that what I had wouldn't be right for this crowd and that I just didn't want to.

Five minutes later she announced my name and said that I was would be reading some prose. I told her loud enough for everyone to hear that I write horror and that I figured that this would not work for this crowd. She said, "We're adults. I think we can handle anything you can throw at us."

Evidently they couldn't. During the reading I got chuckles during the correct moments and total silence when I was done. I looked up and saw a lot of jaws hanging open. There was silence. I just leaned forward into the mic and said, "That's why they call it horror."

Afterward I went and sat down the organizer said. "Well, I've never been speechless before. That concludes tonight's event."

Nobody seemed to want to talk to me as they left. At first it ticked me off. But the more I thought about it the better I felt about the experience. If you write horror you do try to SHOCK the readers.

I had just shocked an entire room into silence. Mission accomplished.

Yeah, I will be more careful where I read from now on. To try to put a positive spin on it, I was happy with how I read the piece and in front of an audience of Horror fans I think it would have been well-received. I did it a lot smoother than I expected. Performance-wise I don't think I did bad. For that audience I probably gave some people nightmares. I'm not going to let myself get pressured into doing something again.

I did learn from the experience.

Yeah, Bob, we've all learned from your experience--eeeeeeeeeeeeeee. This is one of the best, and funniest, horror stories I've ever read. Thanks!

Mmmmmmmmmmelinda