I remember the first time I performed on stage.  The small stage in my high school cafeteria felt much too big when I stood upon it, and the light that poured over me in waves blinded me to everything but the two front rows of seats.  I was terrified.  Sure, I’d played my part a million times in rehearsal, but it was my first time in front of an audience.

Eventually I learned to love the audience for the energy they brought to a performance.  Years after that first performance I developed the confidence to step in front of hundreds of people and perform as if I was in a small room of friends.  The butterflies never left my stomach, but they flapped their wings a little slower, and gave me more courage than fear. An audience is a special thing—their disdain can destroy confidence, and their applause can fulfill weeks or months of hard work in an instant.

With a few rare exceptions, all the times I’ve been on stage, I’ve been saying someone else’s words—sure, the motions and the sounds were mine, but it was someone else’s voice with which I spoke. This time it’ll be different.  This time, the approval or rejection I receive will not be skin-deep, for it will be my words that I speak in my voice, with my own fervor and heart. I will be judged on everything I am and everything I have to say, and I can only hope I will be accepted.

Without an audience, of course, I will always be wonderful, but only to myself.  The audience isn’t just a force to pass judgement, it is a testing ground to discover what moves people and what comes out as simple purposeless words. It is a force for refinement, and a means for making artistic work grow.

The audience is as necessary to the story as the clauses and sentences themselves, because it is through the people who hear the author’s words that the story lives on.  Words will die on paper if no one is there to hear them.  So yes, I am afraid to step onto that stage and profess my own gospel, but failure to do so would be far worse—it would be to condemn my creation to nothingness.