Do You Tell People You Write?

(Still fairly quiet on the blog front, I'm afraid. I'm now back at the day job post-surgery, and I'm kinda perpetually exhausted right now, so posts are still going to be kind of thin on the ground for the next little while.  Bear with me.  Thanks.)

Teralyn Rose Pilgrim writes in a guest post at Nathan Bransford's blog about the various responses you get when you tell people you want to be a writer:

I don't spread around that I want to be a novelist. It's not that I'm shy or feel too inadequate to call myself a writer; it's because of the crazy reactions I get from people.

– Do You Tell People You Write?

She then lists the various kinds of people you will encounter in these conversations, and I think I've met every single one of them.  Pretty funny and all too true.

The main thing I've noticed for years, whenever I tell someone that I'm a writer, is that their immediate question is almost always, "Oh? Have you had anything published?" Which is their way of asking, "Are you really a writer? Do you have the Official Stamp of Approval?" I wonder when, or even if, the indy publishing revolution is going to change that reaction.

(Of course, the flip side of that is that when people hear about my latest book, sometimes they say, "Oh, you've been published! Congratulations!"  And since it is self-published,  I don't exactly know what to say to that . . . . )