When I was younger I was so terrified of public speaking that I went out of my way to avoid it. If I was forced to address a crowd, I didn’t sleep for days before because I would loop disaster scenarios over and over in my head. When it came to the actual event, my hands would be clammy, my breathing would be erratic and I’d speed through my speech in a desperate need just to be done.
At university, I chose subjects merely because they did not involve class presentations. I never applied for jobs that meant addressing a crowd. And when my best friend asked me to speak at her 21st birthday, I drank so much cheap wine that I slurred a sentence or two and then fled outside in shame.
My fear did not come from a lack of confidence. At school, I was the first to audition for a part in a play. Even a singing part when I couldn’t hold a note. On stage I was fearless because I was acting in a role that was separate enough from who I was to keep me safe. But once someone required me to play myself in front of a crowd, I was a mess.
When I became a children’s author, I thought that publishing books would mean I could avoid ever addressing a crowd again. I had an image of myself writing away at home in pyjamas and never meeting a single reader.
How wrong I was.
When I published my first young adult novel 10 years ago, I was invited to speak at a writers’ festival. I said yes without really think much about it. I didn’t know the festival attracted thousands of students and some of the biggest names in publishing. I just thought I’d be having a casual chat to a few teenagers about ghost stories and how my book came to be.
The festival was in Queensland in March. It was hot and I only packed my black Melbourne clothes, complete with a pair of long, heavy boots. I knew no one, but a couple of writers kindly invited me out for dinner the night before we started and I slowly began to glean that perhaps I was ill-equipped for what was coming.
The next morning I arrived at the large marquee set-up outside on the lawn. Two hundred faces stared at me as I walked in. The air was thick and soupy. Five teenagers sat close in the front row. They kept stretching out their legs so that I had to dodge them when I walked up and down the front with the microphone.
I was sweating before I even opened my mouth.
My publisher had come to show her support. Which was lovely but it doubled my fear. Speaking to strangers was hard enough, but speaking to strangers in front of someone that I knew, and respected, was even worse. I could see her in the back row, smiling at me.
Then the rain started falling. Heavy and loud. The marquee roof began to leak and water dribbled down on to the whiteboard where the pens would no longer write. I only had one book to talk about and it didn’t seem like any of the students had read it. Or cared to. The five in the front row started heckling and making jokes about Scooby-Doo because I was talking about hauntings, causing me to lose my place. Obviously out of my depth, I started panicking and forgetting my words. I could feel the tears starting. And I didn’t know what to do.
And then a teenage boy in charge of tech for the marquee grabbed the spare microphone and launched into his own ghost story re-enactment. The story was thrilling, full of fear and suspense, and better than anything I’d said so far. I used the five minutes he spoke to settle and prepare. When he finished, I thanked him, knowing he’d saved me. And I managed to bumble through the rest of the session intact.
I had five more presentations that week, none as bad as the first. And by the end of the festival, I could laugh about my performance, because aside from being heckled and blushing every 30 seconds, stumbling over words and almost crying, I’d survived. And for someone as terrified of public speaking as I’d always been, this seemed a huge win.
I knew I had to somehow learn to overcome my fear. I grilled other writers for their tricks and advice. I added slideshows, reading and a question-and-answer session to my presentation that meant I had markers to work towards. I was still terrified, but a need to earn a living meant I kept going, and the more presentations I did, the more practised I became at surviving the unexpected.
I doubt I will ever relish the idea of fronting up to hundreds of students, but sometimes I surprise myself by enjoying it more than I ever would have thought was possible. And sometimes I present a session and experience that charge that actors must feel when they connect with a crowd, and it makes me drive home with a smile. And on the other days, when the IT isn’t working and nobody laughs at my jokes, I know now that an hour is only an hour, and at the end of it, I can leave.
