If you're seriously considering writing, you've been there. You tell some people you're close to - people you think will understand - that you are writing a book/want to write a book/or want to pursue a degree or career in writing. These usually supportive individuals then look at you like you have just spoken to them completely in nose snorts and tongue rolls. It is as if they are seeing you for the first time with two heads. You become, to them, a new entity.
"Oh," they say. They may nod, sip at a drink, or find a way to excuse themselves from your presence.
When you pursue your dream anyway (though, admittedly hurt that they weren't as enthusiastic as you are about sitting in front of your laptop for three months penning your novel), you will no doubt have to tell other people. Perhaps more distant or new acquaintances. You're at a party or meeting a friend of a friend and someone asks, "What do you do?"
"I'm a writer."
"Oh." [Or if you're luckier] "So you're one of those."
Coming from a family of practical workers with service jobs, I have had my fair share of these encounters. Telling the people around me that I am a writer is somehow equivalent in their minds to me saying that I am an addict who lives under a bridge. Since I'm not guaranteed a 9 to 5 and a paycheck with health benefits, I'm not actually working. It's like writing can be a hobby, but not a career.
Worse still is when they ask, "What have you published?" If you don't instantly answer with a high-brow magazine or house name like The New Yorker, Random House, or the local newspaper, they know you're as crazy as batty Aunt Betty who for the past 70 years thought she was Van Gogh.
If writing is what you want to do and a writer is who you want to be, you'll no doubt experience this if you haven't already. How do you deal? I have no idea. For me (an admitted thin-skinned Midwesterner), I usually hide my distaste in the conversation itself (because we're raised to always be kind) and then go home and brood about how unsupportive my relatives, friends, and friend's friends are. However, no matter what, I still write. Even when I'm tired, sick, or am putting off laundry for another week to do so. Because if you want it bad enough to tell people you're a writer, you have to deliver on your end too. You can't dream all day of being in The New Yorker and having a literary agent if you aren't also working at the same time. If there's nothing to submit and nothing to show for your hours of daydreams, it was all for naught. But if you want it, and you work for it, don't let the practical strangers get in your way. Sure, the odds are not in your favor, but if you keep working, keep creating, and keep submitting, it is likely you will publish something. For some writers, it takes 30 or 50 years. For others it takes only a few months. Don't compare your story to theirs, though, because you are completely different. You have a different schedule, a different work ethic, and a different ability than them, even if it's marginal. Above all, when the career admittance that "I'm a writer" gets you the looks and the weird comments, don't let it phase you. Handle it in the way you need to and then move on. There's a story that needs to be told.
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