One Day to Go

Actually, I don’t know how to count this as the reading is tomorrow night.  So is it  two days?

Whatever it is I’ve now reached the point where my anxiety symptoms are showing up.  A pain in the right side of my back near my shoulder blade and a breathing thing. I guess you’d call it accelerated breathing.  Sometimes that makes me feel faint.  I used to have to breathe in a paper bag.  I’m not there…yet.  In the bag, that is.

This is the worst day so far. 

I have to rehearse again today and put in the post-its so I know what to say when I skip over to the next section.  I got the reading down to 21 minutes last time I read it. This is acceptable.  I hope.

Does Sue Grafton go through this?  She probably doesn’t have to read.  I imagine she just does signings because that would take up an hour or more.  So what about other people who read?  Does everyone almost have a heart attack?  Now I’m going too far.  I’m not almost having a heart attack. 

Look, Sandra, if you screw up the reading, give the wrong inflection to a character, so what?  Are people coming to this thing to watch you fail?  Oh, no.  They aren’t, are they? Nah.  Who’d bother to do that?  I refuse to be that much of a cynic.

But I’m still anxious.