Turns out that you can get writer's block in Toastmasters

 Photo by José Luis, Photographer. Pexels

 

Writer's block took about 4 speeches to show up in my Toastmasters' journey.

How so?

Well let me share something with you --

I was excited to sign up for Toastmasters. My first three speeches came relatively easily. I relied on what I liked and what was already on the tip of my tongue. The things I already loved to talk about, or think about, did make great speeches. 

But then, before my fourth speech, I realized something important -- that can't continue. I had to do a better job in picking my speech topics. I had to admit that my planned speeches were growing stale and weren't panning out. I couldn't think of new ideas. I started to draw a blank.

I had writer's block.

-- but I knew that I wanted to give a speech that Thursday (and it was the Saturday before). I had to fix this.

Let's do some real talk: you can't only do speeches that you'll enjoy. 

Personally, I love speaking on Eastern books like the Tao Te Ching. I love perfume. So I gave two speeches on the eastern stuff and one on perfume. But there's only so much I can talk about with ancient eastern stories, and there is only so much interest in perfume. 

I remember giving my speech on perfume to the vice president of education and he pointed out that the men probably wouldn't be interested and some of the ladies admitted that they weren't into perfume either. Speechcrafting is about the audience. I had to start being honest about the content that would work and engage my audience, and humbly accepting which topics were not that good. I let them go.

Here is my three step process to speechcraft right now

1. Brainstorm topics

I wrote down ideas. I did not have to know anything about the topic immediately but they had to have some interest and potential. I used a single noun like climate or a phrase like "The history of Weston". Now this has opened my speech topic repertoire. Anything I see in the news is fair game. Anything I read online is fair game. When I use this method, I get a wealth of topics to consider. I actually submitted my speech title at this stage, signing up for the next meeting. I knew it was good and that would force me to fill it out with research.

2. Research topics

I just established that I don't know much about these topics. I have a sentence or two to speak about, if that. Each Toastmasters' speech is between 5-7 minutes long, in general, so I will have to know these topics incredibly well in order to speak on them. I had picked the one that I wanted for the upcoming speech and I researched it deeply for an hour. I noted that points are important and began to mentally organize it into a speech. I thought about what would make a good introduction. I thought about what would make a good first point. I start assembling my speech that way.

3. Personalize it

Now that I have my research written out into a speech, it's time to turn research into a speech. I started saying the speech as is but I repeated it several times, making it more and more my style. The plain facts I found online became adjusted, with flourishes, pauses and emphasis added. I thought about how I wanted to tell each story, the feelings I wanted to evoke, and worked on that. I have the content but now I needed to make it mine. Next Thursday, the stage will be mine and all eyes will be on me for 7 minutes. I don't want to be reciting the lines I researched. Instead, I want to be telling my story, commanding the stage.

Takeaway

You have committed to giving hundreds of speeches by joining Toastmasters. So have I. 

Our ability to stick with the topics we love and know is limited. We should also think of the audience and their interests. Being willing to stretch ourselves is how we are going to make this work. I also think one cool perk is how it will expand our education and knowledge base. We must think of our audience and make sure that our speeches are wonderful to experience