It's Hard to Talk About

Friend: How is your writing going?

Me: Fine.

Friend: What are you working on?

Me: A couple of things.

Because, really, the truth is, outside of online, I find it very, very difficult to talk about my writing.

Does that happen to any of you?

Sometimes I Just Don't Want To Talk About It

I think there are members of my family that think I'm really anti-social. In fact, I imagine they are sure I am.

Today we took the kids to a bar mitzvah. A lot of my family was there and we were seated all together at a table. Nicely, because they love me, they asked me a lot about my writing.

I had a hard time answering them.

Example:

Family Member: Hey Rebecca, how is the writing going?

Me: Fine.

Family Member: What are you working on?

Me: The third book in a series I've been working on

Family Member: Oh your wolf books?

Me: No, another series

Family Member: What is that series about?

This is where it becomes complicated. This is the third book in this series. It's about a lot of stuff. It's about love versus violence, its about fate, its about becoming the people we're supposed to be. It might be useful, at this point, if I said something like 'It's really hard to describe." But I'm not built that way so I say something like this:

Me: It's about these mythical people I invented called the Outsiders. They're fighting a battle of good versus evil.

Family Member: Are they aliens?

Me: No.

Silence.

The truth is, it's very hard for me to talk about my writing when I'm not writing it or to talk about it with people who a. haven't read it or b. aren't also in the same business. So I think that rather than have the above conversation over and over again, I tend to make my conversations more like this:

Family Member: How is the writing?

Me: Oh Fine.

And then I try to change the subject because the answer 'it's complicated' tends to lead to silence and I don't want to be come off as antisocial.

How about all of you? Do you talk about your writing with your family?