Personal essays.
I battled my mixed feelings about them the entire time I worked as an editor for skirt! magazine. Nikki Hardin, the magazine's founder, is superb at writing them. It was one of the reasons she created a magazine that featured personal essays. But I worried that some essays we published from other writers might sound like whining by people with more good fortune than they deserved.
That began to be all I could think about when I'd write my monthly editor's letter. Don't let me be guilty. Please don't let me sound like a spoiled brat.
Fast forward. It's Valentine's Day 2017.
I'm huddled around the table with my classmates in The Nickelodeon's podcasting class. Friends wondered why I was taking it. I'd been writing, producing and editing projects since before I was in college.
Those projects, though, didn't have the feel of This American Life. I wanted to see if I could write a personal story and bring it to life with sound.
That's not a heartbeat on Valentine's Day but a soundwave: Our teacher, Cooper McKim, giving us some tips for putting our stories together.
On that night, we were reading our scripts. And when it was my turn, I was incredibly nervous. Alone in front of my laptop, I thought I'd written something funny.
But you never know.
My topic was my basketball fandom.
I follow the University of South Carolina's women's basketball team. I'm more than a fan, even. At the time, I was mentoring one of the players.
So when I watched my team play the invincible women of the University of Connecticut, it was nerve wracking.
That was the personal story I had decided to tell.
My voice cracked as I read the first lines. My hands shook. I was breathless, going too fast.
I teach public speaking and present in front of huge groups of people, but all that experience--apparently--was worthless at the moment.
Then my classmates laughed. I started to relax.
They laughed some more.
They liked my personal angle.
So, with a few minor copy changes, I went for it.
Being able to use my voice--my actual voice as well as my writing voice--to create a finished product was new for me. I liked it.
Taking the class helped me think about new ways for telling my stories. It reminded me of what I've always liked about personal essays, the vulnerability that the writer risks and the way it makes me feel connected to the writer.
Here's the end result on SoundCloud.
If it sounds a little "rustic," I hope you'll forgive that: All the audio was recorded on my cell phone, edited with free software downloaded from Hindenburg:
