Friday, July 30, 2010

Okay, although I’ve done everything I can to prepare, I still have a storm of butterflies wreaking havoc in my tummy about my book signing and reading tomorrow. Well, I’m pretty alright with the signing part, but the reading’s got me worked up.

It’s not like I haven’t read each and every one of the chapters in my books to my weekly critique group. I have. Or that I’m not comfortable talking to groups of people. But those are the parts about the reading that have me nervous.

What’s got me anxious is the fear that I’ll begin reading, and there will be no one sitting in the chairs to listen. I’m booked and obligated to go through with the signing and reading whether or not folks show up. And I’m literally starting to have nightmares about reading to a bunch of empty seats. (Enter the Psycho shower scene or Jason coming back to life in the Halloween movies, and you’re getting an idea of my anxiety level.)

This has me more worked up than the first time I had to get up and address over four hundred people. But at least those seats were filled with standing room only. And when I found myself getting nervous, I implemented the age-old trick of imagining everyone in his or her underwear, which did help alleviate my nervousness. But here’s my question. If there’s no one filling the seats tomorrow, and I get nervous, how am I to imagine them in their underwear?