Thursday 7 April 2011

SECRET SHAME

I've been writing for too long now. Unpublished, alas. For the first few years, I didn't tell too many people I was writing: close friends, but it wouldn't be something I'd shoot out there at random. Or not much.
Partly, I think it was because the thing that I was writing was so embarrassing. (Of which more later...)

As hobbies go, I like to think writing is probably more interesting to most people than, say, stamp-collecting. On the fun-o-meter, I imagine, it's one of the better ones. Like bungee jumping. Or rummaging through other people's underpant drawers. When I first tell people, their eyes often light up (or they run away fast). Really? they ask. So what do you write? They almost always assume it's been published.

Then I get all pink about the face, and wonder whether it might be more socially acceptable to claim that was a mistake and what I meant to say was that my hobby is not writing really. It's celebrity-stalking.

The answer for why people react with such shock/or surprise only came to me recently. They're thinking: if you aren't published, how could you have the audacity to indicate the existence of your novel (aka no-doubt-dreadful heap of dog's droppings) let alone trumpet it to all and sundry.

I find the best approach is to smile, as if to say, yes, I have no shame. And not offer to reveal mind-numbing details of plot that make sense only to me. That's what this blog is for.

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