I know people who think that being a writer is easy. They are idiots. I say that because if they had ever tried to actually be a writer, they’d know it wasn’t easy and so they’d stop being idiots. I’m all about letting people make choices.
I also know people who don’t write, don’t want to, and know that writing isn’t easy, but who don’t read. Those I get along with in the sense that I will give them an up-nod at the supermarket, but I won’t engage in any lengthy conversation.
There’s the people who don’t write, don’t want to, and know that writing isn’t easy, but who read, and don’t mind talking about what they read. Or have some interest in doing so. These are good people, stimulating, worthy of swaths of my time because they help me become a better writer by showing me what engages their interest. The ones who are too damn enthusiastic if not outright fanatical about what they read, for whom capitalization was invented, as in THAT BOOK CHANGED MY LIFE AFTER I READ IT and I HAVE NEVER FELT SO ALIVE EVER, are redundancy terrorists and anathema to my limited patience. I’m not exactly a people-person. Maybe you noticed.
Then there’s the group of people who want to talk about me being a writer and about writing, but only want to know if I’ve been on a best seller list. I pity these people for they are wannabe paparazzi without the prefrontal coordination to stalk narcissists consistently. And because they often wear too much floral scent.
The people who want to talk about me being a writer and about writing come in two other categories: the explorers and the the engineers. The explorers ask open-ended questions about ideas and plots and genres and books that influenced me and movies I liked and why I wanted to become a writer in the first place. These are fun people, focused on me, and who deserve a soupçon of my attention back. Maybe more, depending on their gender and age. And wardrobe. I am not fashion-conscious, but I am fashion-adjacent. No, I don’t know what that means.
The engineers want to know what laptop I use for writing (always a laptop, or in olden days, a netbook; they never ask if I use a Mac or PC, which I do—Mac), what type of environment (café, Starbucks, teashop, some other sub-genre of “informal food-vending place”), how many words I write per session per week per month and per book, how many drafts, and don’t get me started on the pantser-plotter thing. When I’m asked if I’m pantser or a plotter I say “plotser” and walk away. No one has ever asked me to come back and explain my answer.
I know people who appreciate I am a writer, ask me how my works are coming together, and inquire no further. These are the people I am closest to because to them, my being a writer is not a label: it is a quality. It is part of who I am, like my competitiveness, willingness to lend a hand, and sarcasm. To them, my being a writer is normal and odd, and they choose to treat it as normal because odd makes it awkward. Writing is already hard enough without people making it even more so.
So, on the people and writing thing, I come down on the side of: “Most people don’t grok why I write, and these are people to be avoided.” Too long for a tattoo or bumper sticker, not that I’d wear either one. And my social calendar has plenty of blank spaces in it, which I do wish would lessen over time.
