Crowdsourcing My Anxiety

I’m terrified of reading to an audience. At a podium, I completely lose sight of who I am and I can barely even pronounce my own name. This fear has gotten better over the years — experience really does help in this area. If I’m lucky, I can use this anxiety as a source of humor on stage (and if I’m not lucky, I have to be rolled off stage while still in the fetal position). But it still scares the crap out of me.

In order to deal with this problem (and also to shake things up because I honestly find most readings kind of boring), I plan to accompany my reading with a video at many of the events in August. (Portland! Seattle! San Francisco! Los Angeles! San Diego! Check out my events page.)

But here’s my next problem: Which video to play? I have a secret one that I’ll be playing at some locations, but I also want to have a few other options. Any suggestions? Any favorites? I should say in advance that I want to use a short one — I don’t want to massacre my audience with a 50-minute Scrivener video, for example. I also don’t want it to get too geeky or too targeted at writers-only since I want to entertain a regular person walking into a bookstore (who might enjoy my brand of storytelling). Any suggestions?

Thank you thank you thank you for any feedback!

Oh. Also… I’m going to give one random commenter an advanced copy of my book, along with a $20 iTunes gift card buried in one of the more self-conscious pages. Post a comment here by July 5th to qualify.

Party on.