I Berate Storytellers at the Worst Moments
I’m sitting in the wings with storytellers at one of our biggest Speak Up shows of the year. We’ve sold out a 550-seat theater in downtown Hartford, and Elysha is center stage, introducing our first storyteller of the night, Jeni Bonaldo. I’m sitting beside Jeni, demanding that she start her first novel.
“Write a sentence a day,” I say. “And then make it a page a day. Write a page a day, and after a year, you’ll have a novel.”
“You’re always berating me for not accomplishing enough,” she says. “It’s never enough for you.”
I’ve just launched into a lecture on the importance of goal setting when I hear Elysha reaching the end of Jeni’s introduction, and I realize that this woman is about to take the biggest stage of her life, and I have just spent the last minute before her performance haranguing her.
As she rises from her chair, I try to tell her how impressed I am with everything that she does. Teacher. Storyteller. Mother. Future novelist. I don’t think she hears a word I say as she steps into the light.
She performs brilliantly. Truly. She is vulnerable and hilarious and heartbreaking. She is beautiful. But it isn’t any thanks to me.