Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Brandy Williams, author of Practical Magic for Beginners and The Woman Magician. In high school I was required to take speech class. For a shy, clumsy kid this was a torment. The first time I stood in front of class I was shaking like a leaf. My teacher was great. She found something to praise in every one in class, however bad we were, and kept rotating us up to the podium so each of us had many chances to speak. She taught me the basics of public address: how to look at the audience, not to fix on one person but to keep my eyes moving, how to smile and seem as if I was interested in my topic, and how to organize a speech so that it flowed