It is particularly silly because ordinary social occasions do not make me shy. I do not enjoy big parties, but I can go to them, and whatever I feel is not really shyness. I suppose, actually, the feeling is–I don’t know whether every author feels it, but I think quite a lot do–that I am pretending to be something I am not, because, even nowadays, I do not quite feel as though I am an author. I still have that overlag of feeling that I am pretending to be an author.
