Speak, Walk,and Sparkle
A week ago I spoke at a girls' event. I did a session for middle school girls, my first time to talk to that age. I had no idea what to expect. Here's a little blip of rough video of our intro. A little light material before we got into the serious stuff.
If you're a speaker, it's good to video yourself and watch. (totally painful.) From watching this, I've learned:
1. My shoes didn't sparkle as much as I thought they did.
2. Tank tops on short girls gather in the middle. Not good. Not good at all.
3. I think I got my 10,000 steps a day in during the first five minutes of the event. Lesson learned, with apologies to the crowd.
4. I blink approximately once a second. Sometimes two. My friend Kim took about 20 pictures. I had my eyes open in zero percent of them.
5. Wondering if Excessive Blinking is enough to get me a special parking permit.
6. Many middle schoolers do not yet understand the concept of rhetorical question.
7. Middle schoolers do have attention spans. It's unclear how this disappears by the time they get to ninth grade.
8. Praying over these girls was a total honor. They're going to need it.
My next speaking event is this June/July. I'll be tagging along with Susie and the whole gang in Ecuador for two weeks for Never The Same. I'm a little nervous about leaving Miller that long, so please sign up, go with us, and be there to whisper encouragement like, “Miller hasn't decided you're never coming back and thrown himself off the top of the mantle. . .”
Then in July I'll be at SheSpeaks, co-teaching a session with fab author Mary DeMuth on incorporating story into your speaking and teaching for ministry. Mary will address the more serious side, and I will take the light version. I hope we don't get confused and switch.
She Speaks only accepts 50 attendees, so if you're interested, sign up now! I've heard such good things about this conference. It was on my to-do list to attend, so to get to go this year AND to participate, I am blessed. And I would love to see you there.
Then in September (where I will know better than speed walking across the stage…), I'll be at the American Christian Fiction Writer's conference in St. Louis. I'm teaching a class on dialogue and one on brain storming. If you have any interest in fiction writing, GO. I have learned SO much at these conferences. That first one changed my life. Best investment evah. (Except maybe for my collection of sweat shirts.)
Have a great week. I will be absent til next Monday, working on There You'll Find Me. (You'll Find Me crying and binge eating over my laptop…) We have contests and cover reveals coming soon, so let's all meet back here next week and hang out again, shall we?
