Tonight I get to participate in a public reading for my local writer's club.  I've never done an actual public reading before so I'm excited.  I'm not too nervous, not anymore.  Some of you might have done this type of thing before, some of you might not have.  

Either way, I have some advice to pass along that you might find helpful (even though (as of yet) I haven't done one of these things either):

When you do a public reading, it might not be the best idea to take a story you wrote years ago and rewrite a mere two days before said event.  No, it's really a very bad idea, even if good things do come from it.  Bad because it's embarrassing when you read the revision to your wife the night before said reading and she interrupts you halfway through to say it's nowhere near as good as it was before.  Worse because, after thinking about it for a while, you realize with no small amount of frustration that to a large degree, she's right, and you need to burn the proverbial midnight oil to incorporate the cool stuff you changed with the older, cherished version.  

Sure, the flipside of this is the story is now better than it first was and definitely better than it was 24 hours ago.  But really, you should've figured this out earlier than the day before you're scheduled to read it to a crowd of people.  (It does help that the crowd is mostly going to be a bunch of fellow writers, friends, and family.  I think.)  

One good thing: it's cool to know your wife cares enough about your story and has the guts to say she doesn't like something about it, even though it may not be exactly what you want to hear at the time.