Don’t Save Your Breath: Revolutionary IMprov Prose

Through the years, I’ve had many friends, you included, who have told me positive things about me. They said kind, wonderful things, even when I argued with them, even when I didn’t believe them, even when it was obvious that I was exhausting them with my negativity and self-pity. They kept telling me wonderful thoughts:
I was good, I was smart, I was kind, I was important, I was intelligent, I was attractive, I was cute, I was an eccentric genius, someday I’d find my tribe and they’d get me.
and many other positive affirmations.
At the time these things were told me, I didn’t believe them. Sometimes I had to hear them many times, but finally I reached a place in my life where I realized that those things could be, might be, possibly may be, true. I accepted them, held on to them, carried them deep in my heart and my soul. They gave me hope. They prompted me and prodded me to keep trying, keep believing, keep hoping.
When I finally decided to take the leap out of self-pity and self-loathing, realizing that I could be someone worthwhile, the memory of all those positive comments came flooding back to me and substantiated me and reinforced me.

You face people who don’t believe you when you tell them how wonderful they are. It seems that you could repeat yourself until you are blue in the face, and they would never believe you. It seems like a waste of time.
So should you save your breath?
That fabulous, articulate, insightful, intelligent, kind breath?
No. Please no!

How To Read Aloud: Revolutionary IMprov Prose

A young relative of mine was “feeling frustrated”. She said: “Oh how I just love being able to read fast and clearly in my head, but if I’ve got to read aloud it’s as if my tongue can’t cooperate with my mind and I stutter like a lunatic..urgh!”
I responded:

You stutter and stammer and feel frustrated when you read aloud because you’ve fallen into the trap of the modern world that says “Faster is better.”

It’s not.

Would you rush a sunset?
Would you hasten the first spring song of a robin?
Would you demand that the maple’s leaves turn bright crimson faster?

The written word, spoken aloud, is meant to be caressed and savored and enunciated and appreciated. Reading out loud is not a race to see how fast you can impart information, but a performance to see how movingly you can paint a verbal picture of what the writer intended, with the word pallet given to you.

Slow down.
Breathe.
Emote.
Experience.
Enjoy.