It's All Right Just to Be the Same Old (Adequately Wonderful) Person That You Are

This weekend I'm speaking at a children's book writers' conference jointly hosted by the Mid-Atlantic chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and the Graduate Programs in Children's Literature at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, where I am a faculty member. I'm giving a keynote address on my favorite topic - "How to Have a Joyous Creative Career in an Hour a Day" - and an afternoon breakout session on my other favorite topic - "Structure and Sparkle: Writing the Transitional Chapter Book."

I love to speak at conferences, and I've given both of these talks before to appreciative audiences, but this time the conference is via ZOOM. It feels very different to sit all alone at your desk speaking to your computer screen than to stand up in front of a live audience in a chandelier-hung ballroom. And nowadays everybody - as in EVERYBODY - has a PowerPoint to go along with their presentations, and: 1) I barely know how to make a PowerPoint (I did all my decades of teaching via chalk and chalkboard); 2) technology makes me tense and jittery; and 3) I'm already tense and jittery enough presenting via the weird ZOOM format with tight time constraints for each session.

So my dilemma was this. Should I accept that audiences nowadays (especially ZOOM audiences) expect to have some appealing visuals and not just my big round head talking on their screen? Should I face the fact that it is time for me (quite belatedly) to join the 21st century and start making PowerPoints like the rest of the world? Or should I just stick with being my old-fashioned, tried-and-true, Claudia self? Put another way: Would it be good for this old dog to rise to the challenge of learning some new tricks? Or should I just do what I've always done, in the way I've always done it? 

I was bravely leaning toward the first option, but feeling knots in my stomach about the whole thing: not just figuring how to make the PowerPoint, but fiddling with the technology during the presentation itself, struggling to share my screen, having the slides not advance... oh, so many horrors to foresee! But somehow everyone else manages to do it (though not without a good number of snafus). Perhaps the time had come for me leap into these turbulent modern-day waters and hope I would somehow, miraculously, transform from desperate dog paddler to Olympic champion swimmer?

I asked my brilliant and wise friend Lisa, one of the conference organizers, what she thought I should do. Within minutes she emailed back what I was hoping, in my heart of hearts, to hear: "Be your tried and true Claudia Self. There is no question about it." 

Hooray! 

So now, instead of spending today churning my innards with dread about tomorrow's terrors, I can be pleasurably excited, with just the usual rush of energizing adrenaline.

 I can just BE WHO I AM, which is, I've decided, adequately wonderful.

Maybe one of these days I'll have a surge of courage and try out a PowerPoint presentation in a lower-stakes setting, one more suitable for trial-and-error. 

But tomorrow, I'll just be my Claudia Self. 

After all, that's who the conference organizers invited. It might as well be who they get.