Every year Otterbein University's literary magazine, Quiz & Quill, hosts an open mic night called Hoodlums & Hipsters on the third floor of Old Bag of Nails (for those of you who are familiar).

As a part of the Editorial Board for Quiz & Quill, I was expected to go. I showed up, but had no intentions of reading. At all. Like most writers, I didn't feel like I had anything worth reading. I had nothing prepared, so I figured I'd go another year without speaking up. Better luck next year, right?

Wrong.

After waiting until the last moment with my Managing Editor bugging me to sign up, I finally caved. Needless to say, it was a hard pill for me to swallow. Listening to others—people with such unique voices of their own—didn't bode well for my confidence. Sometimes their voices lit a spark in me, egging me to take the mic, and other times they silenced me—left me with swelling insecurities about my own voice.

I heard several symphonies of poetry and spoken word, but knew I couldn't match them. My trade is fiction; I couldn't string fancy metaphors and phrases together with deeper meaning. That is in no way, my "thing."

Instead, I walked up to the table with the mic, each step heavier than the next, with a work of fiction I'd been working on for months in my hands. It was the only thing I had that could muster up even an ounce of pride in my chest. It was my baby, in a matter of speaking. The idea of sharing it both invigorated and terrified me.

I took the mic and it shook in my hand as I spoke. Of course, I spoke awkwardly to the crowd before I could start reading. Announced how I couldn't write poetry, how I couldn't come up with something beautiful like we had all previously listened to, and that I wrote fiction. That's when I started.

I shook like I had a bad case of hypothermia the entire time, but I was told my voice did not waver. I was told that I'd grown as a writer in my descriptions and vivid images I created. I was told that people were happy I was brave enough to share. I was told that my work was worth it.

I guess that's my lesson to take away from this. Everybody has something to say, and everybody has insecurities, but what you have to say is always worth it. Even if you can't write a lick of beautiful stanzas and metaphors like me, your words are worth it. That's the spirit of open mic night, after all.