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Monday, June 21, 2010

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?


8 comments:

  1. I think my husband is secretly hoping I'll grow out of this 'phaze'. LOL I love talking shop with other writers but that's about it. Discussing the nuances of my stories is difficult unless the person's read it. The easiest people for me to discuss my books with are my sons, they genuinely seem to be interested in the monster and alien aspects. Oh and no, we don't discuss the sex.

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  2. Lol. Welcome to the club. I clam up too whenever someone in RL asks me about my writing. How do you go - the plot is this v/s this and the character arc takes her from this through this to this and there's the romance external/internal conflict that blows up to this big black moment before it gets resolved that her character arc is now complete and she can-- See what I mean?

    My surefire answer now when asked 'How's the writing?' is to go 'penning the next Bend It Like Beckham.' Which is not a book, btw, lol, but it gets people the info.

    Hugs!

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  3. LOL! You tell them you're penning the next Bend it Like Beckham? That's awesome! LOL!! Good answer Z!!

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  4. I'm a lot like you. I try not to talk about my writing too much to my real life friends and family, because they just don't understand. If they want to know what I write, I tell them it is historical romance. If they want to know what type of historical romance, I'll tell them it is Regency-set. That's about the extent of what I tell them, other than perhaps keeping them up to date with how things are going in terms of finding an agent or editor for my writing. Even that, though, I try to keep to a minimum. They just don't understand the process and it is too much to explain.

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  5. Cat-
    I'm so relieved that I'm not the only one who doesn't like to discuss it. It's kind of hard to be like 'Well I'm in Chapter 14, ending a story ARC and heading to the end of the action.' LOL!

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  6. I don't talk about my books at all. I used to but I saw this blank look come over there faces. lol They didn't understand a thing I was talking about.

    But I do talk about the business end of writing, and non-writers seem very interested in that, especially readers.

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  7. Sandy, thanks for coming by. I get the blank look too. LOL!!

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