Is this the age of “me”?

So an interesting thing happened to me this week. And last week. And the week before that. It’s not so much interesting as it is annoying actually.

I take great pride in the fact that I can say that I am a writer and I actually got over that hump of saying that I wrote not just one book to completion, but several (even though some are serials that need future books). But lately I have not been able to say this. I have been saying that I am an editor or that I work in publishing. Which is part of the truth because I do in fact engage in both, but they are not the whole picture of what I do.

Why?

Because I have not been able to tell people that I am a novelist or a writer without the topic of THEM coming up almost immediately. I get people who desperately want me to be a ghost/phantom writer for them or they want me to write about their life. They suddenly have something amazing they had happen that needs to be documenting and published so people can have a moment of awe that they lived through something quite difficult, or they want me to write a story they have in their head and reek all the profit. Or at least half.

This angers me to no end. They don’t ask me , “What is your book about?” Or “What genre do you write in?” They just want something from me. It becomes about them almost immediately. Which shouldn’t be the case. If I knew someone who was a writer and I didn’t happen to be one, I would want to know more. I would want to buy their books and find out what makes them tick as a writer because writing a whole gosh darn book is something of a feat. At least to me it, but I digress.

Is it safe to say that I am a writer? Or have I just run into several people who don’t have the courage to sit in front of a computer for hours on end and put out the words themselves? They say they don’t have time, or they are too lazy. Well, then I can’t help you. Because believe it or not am working on my own writing and I don’t want to work for someone who simply can’t find the time to do something. That ultimately means that they won’t have the time to look at anything I write for them anyway.

This baffles me. Is this just an age of “me?”

To other writer’s out there, what do you say when people ask what you do? Do you take pride in it? Do people say the same thing to you as they have to me? And more importantly, why is this a world of talking and not listening? I firmly believe that if someone cannot listen, they cannot be a writer. Because listening and taking time out to actually read is what writers are generally made of.