I recently won a writing contest. Okay, that’s cool, I’m pleased. Part of the deal is a hundred bucks — being a college student (and not one of those “John Ritters III” type college students who populate certain nearby campuses that shall go unnamed) — and that’s pretty cool too. But there is one other little thing — you have to read your piece aloud.

Say what?

(To get the full effect you have to hear the “Say what?” in a drawn-out, falsetto squeal.)

First of all, I’m Irish. That means I’m pale. And that means that I blush like [insert various clichés to your heart's content]. Not only do I have the skin tone of a dead fish before my slight summer freckling comes along to barely mask it (oh boy), I have a voice that’s been compared to Daria’s on more than ten occasions. So I’m basically pretty primed for these reading shenanigans.

But besides the personal awkward factor, it got me thinking. What is it about reading aloud that’s so elusive? You’re good at it, or you’re not. It’s rare to just be able to rattle off a page with good pacing, good breathing, using intonation without lapsing into children’s-show voices à la Lamb Chop… It’s tricky business. An audience member even commented on the reading of a participant in the reading marathon, who had gone up before me. She remarked on the gap in interpretation of an author’s work, between reading it to yourself, with the tone and literal voices set in your mind, and having it interpreted for you. Is reading aloud an art that’s fallen along the wayside?

(That’s mostly rhetorical, don’t stress yourself out.)