not that kind of writer

I had one of Those Conversations yesterday.  One of the ones I hate.  One of the ones where I’m stuck somewhere, making polite smalltalk with someone else who is stuck in the same place I am, and they ask me what I do.

I cannot possibly be the only person who is tempted to say “Oh, things.  Sometimes stuff.  Except when I don’t.”

But I know that what I am being asked is “what do you do for a living?” and so I answer.

I try to make it sound as humdrum and boring as possible.  ”Oh, I’m a writer, you?” No fanfare, no pause for puffery or list of publications, and immediately followed by that turn to the other person, to try to steer the conversation away from the edge of the giant pit there is an approximately 70% chance it is about to plummet into.

This only sometimes works.

There are a bunch of common reactions I get to telling people what I do professionally, which I list in rough order of the degree to which they make me feel as if I have just stepped into a bog that is going to demand my boot off my foot before it will let me go again:

“Oh!  What do you write?”
“As in, you write books?  Like, novels and things?”
“Really?  Have I heard of you?”
“Oh my god, that’s so cool, so are any of your books movies?”
“Oh, that’s so amazing!  I’ve always thought I should write a book…”
“Oh my God, I’m a writer too!”

Allow me to explain.

“Oh!  What do you write?” is the response I hope I’ll get.  It’s the best response, and the politest.  It has analogues for any profession — “Oh, you’re a teacher?  What do you teach?”  ”Oh, you’re an architect?  What kind of projects do you work on?”– and is a good all-purpose bit of conversation.  Thus it is the response I most often get from other people who, upon hearing that someone is a writer, nevertheless continue to perceive themselves to be having just a typical all-purpose conversation with someone they don’t know.  Which they are.  I appreciate their clarity on this point.

“As in, you write books?  Like, novels and things?” is harmless enough.  I find that usually this comes from people who primarily read fiction, so that’s their frame of reference for what “writer” is.  It’s never an issue, though, when I remind these folks that no, not every book is a novel, and I write some of the ones that aren’t.  Usually this information is taken on board thoughtfully, and it is a pleasant conversation that can go other places easily.

“Really?  Have I heard of you?” always makes me want to say “I don’t know, have I heard of you?”  Suddenly finding myself in the middle of a nonconsensual game of Name Recognition Bingo is awkward.  Also, how rude is the implication that if the person you’re talking to is really what they say they are, they ought to be famous enough for you to know them?  I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but I’ve been in a bookstore or two in my time and I have upon the odd occasion had the thought that every single one of the books in those bookstores was written by someone, but I sure the hell don’t know who they all are.

“Oh my god, that’s so cool, so are any of your books movies?” just kinda makes me sad.  It’s not that I am sad that none of my books have been made into movies.  That’s not something I think about, because I don’t write the kinds of books that get made into movies.  It makes me sad because there are just so many layers of explaining, there, to give any answer beyond a simple “no,” to someone who clearly believes that a book isn’t really a book , or at least not a book worth its salt, unless it’s not a book at all, but a movie.

“Oh, that’s so amazing!  I’ve always thought I should write a book…” tends to make me want to text myself that there is some horrible emergency and I must leave at once, even if I have just gotten on a train or am next in line at the Registry of Motor Vehicles.  It is, of course, a fine thing that someone thinks that writing is wonderful.  (It is wonderful. Sometimes.)  Certainly it is a fine thing to have dreams and ambitions.  But generally these are people who, if they only wrote for half as long as they will happily spend telling you what they would write, would have three trilogies in hand by now.  Thus I recommend saying this to a working writer only if you do not mind if the writer smiles sweetly and says  ”Then go away and write one.”

“Oh my God, really? I’m a writer too!” is the worst. (Or at least it shares that place with the people who respond to learning that someone’s a writer by saying that they have this great story to tell and that the writer should be willing to write it and sell it and then they’ll split the royalties, with the writer usually being offered something princely, like 30%.)

Maybe other working writers have had different experiences, but I have never had this reaction from someone who did, in fact, write professionally.  Other writers usually do the “oh, what do you write?” thing.  No, the “I’m a writer too,” dripping with desperate desire for acceptance and validation, usually comes from people who write, and desperately want to be professional writers.

I get that, I truly do. But I’m uncomfortable feeling like someone’s looking to me to tell them they’re a Real Writer.  I dunno, I’m not the Pope of Writing, no one handed me the Great Sceptre Of Professional Discernment.  I’m perfectly happy to consider an aspiring pro writer, or even an avocational writer with no intention to try to become a professional, as a real honest-to-Pete writer. Maybe it’s that I’ve known an awful lot of people who’ve made the transition from aspiring to actual professional writerdom, but I do think of aspiring professionals as writers.  Maybe it’s that I don’t, in fact, think that someone needs to write for a living in order to claim “writer” status, any more than someone needs to own a restaurant to claim to be a good cook, or needs to be a member of the New York Philharmonic to claim to be a violinist.  Wallace Stevens and Charles Ives both worked in insurance all their lives, y’know?

My dread of getting the “I’m a writer too” response has nothing to do with my thinking that someone else isn’t a writer if they don’t do it for pay, or with thinking that I’m better than they are because I do.  It’s that I don’t want to be asked to tell them they’re Real.  And I don’t really want to try to talk writing with them.   Not because I don’t think they have things to say about it.  I know they do. But mostly, I don’t.

Mostly they write fiction.  Mostly I don’t.

Mostly they want to talk about writing as an Art.  Mostly I don’t work that way, I’m an educator and an entertainer and sometimes a craftsman with my writing, not so much an Artist.

Mostly they want to talk about technique, and creativity, and Julia Cameron and Anne Lamott and morning pages and MFAs and I don’t know what all.  Mostly I don’t know shit about that stuff.  I have no training to do what I do as a writer, none whatsoever.  All I know is that every writer I have ever talked to has had to sort it out for hirself.  I learned to write by putting my ass in the chair and words on the page and then reading them aloud, later, to see whether or not any of the words actually worked.

(Maybe you ask a friend or two to read it and tell you if it sucks or not.  Maybe you just trust your gut.)

Mostly they want to know if I can tell them how to get an agent.  Mostly I tell them the truth, which is that I got lucky and an agent I turned out to like very much found me.   I don’t actually know how people go about hunting the wily literary agent or what sorts of safari equipment is required, so if people want to know that they should ask someone who has bagged one.

Mostly they want to know if it’s really as glamorous as they think it is, if I get to be Inspired a lot, and cash a lot of royalty checks, and if everybody loves me and thinks my work is genius.

Mostly, I spend a lot of time alone, thinking and writing, and if inspiration happens to strike I count myself very lucky and hope it doesn’t happen when I’m in the shower or right when I’m falling asleep because it doesn’t happen often and I really like to be able write it down when it does.

Mostly the money is, ah, well.  Let us just say that like almost every other working writer I know, I am in no danger of becoming cocky about my cash flow.

Mostly I am lucky, and yes, some truly wonderful people do love me.  Some people additionally love my work.  Some people do not.

Mostly, as with most of what most people do most of the time, most people don’t have an opinion about what I do one way or the other and it has never occurred to them that they might.

But mostly, I dread getting the “Oh my God, I’m a writer too!” response because I have yet to run into anyone who’s had that response to whom I was able to just say the one thing I actually do have to say to them.  Mostly, it feels too awkward, too bald, to just say it in conversation, too much like dropping the mic, or a bomb.  So I don’t say it.

But I’m going to say it here.

Writing is a grand profession and a terrible business.  There is nothing about it that is any more inherently magical than doing anything else.  If writing is what you long to do then yes, by all means, write. Write whatever you want to write.  Put it out there.  Write some more.  Put that out there too.  See what happens.  But don’t forget that being who you long to be, and having the life that you long to have, are part of a different process, and not things you can create simply by putting words on a page.