Slowly, the adrenaline is ebbing out of my body. I’ve just come back from the local high school, where I gave a pep talk to the Creative Writing class on NaNoWriMo – which, of course, is coming up in just ten days. The youngest Offspring happens to be a student in that class, and I know the teacher because she used to be the elementary school librarian before moving to the high school; I helped out running Scholastic Book Fairs a time or two (being a book addict, that’s like peddling dope to kids, trying to get them hooked – muahahahah!). I’d been telling her about my books – Happy Birthday, Seventh Son! – and offered to talk to the class about self-publishing, but as it turns out, she’d just had an author in, doing that very thing. However, she was interested in getting the kids into NaNoWriMo. So off I went, armed with a copy each of Seventh Son and Cat and Mouse to show them what can come out of participating in NaNoWriMo, and I gave them that talk.
Well, I hope I put the NaNo bug in some of the kids’ ears. If one or two of them go to the NaNo page to sign up, and it maybe gets a young novelist started on their path [Bzzzzzt! I never told them about last year’s grad who’d mentioned winning NaNo twice!], it’ll have been well worth the adrenaline zaps. Just think, how fitting that it took place during Seventh Son‘s birthday week!
And now my nerves are calming down, the zaps are getting fewer and farther apart [bzzt!], and it’s time to get on with the rest of my day. Incidentally, speaking of said Seventh Son‘s birthday week, you can still get the ebook on sale and enter the draw for a hardcopy. Go do that thing!
Life, the Universe, and [bzzt!] Adrenaline Zaps. Happy Birthday, Seventh Son!
As part of our new classical homeschool group, the kids have to do oral presentations every week. Every week! It would be torture for me (and it was torture for Joy, the first couple weeks), but they’re getting more comfortable with it, and I’m hopeful it means that they will not have as hard a time with adrenaline buzzes when they have to do public speaking as adults! I’m like you – I’m fine in the moment, but whoa boy does it take me forever to wind down afterward.
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That’s great that they practise this stuff so early. I’m sure if I did it a lot, it would become easier and not *as* adrenaline-inducing, but whenever I’m “performing” (which is what a presentation is) I’m exhausted afterwards. Even doing preschool storytime at the library took it out of me big time!
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