I avoid talking about my writing in most situations. Some of it’s college overexposure to the creative writing major, black-beret-and-coffeeshop crowd, and a resulting allergy to being lumped in with them. Some of it’s that, as others have said, the act of writing is just not that interesting save to other writers.
But mostly I think writing occupies this very awkward headspace in Western culture. In large part it’s because books just aren’t that common a form of entertainment any more. I don’t mind admitting I’m a writer to avid readers because they say reader things like “what’s it about?” or “what kind of thing do you write” or “oh, that’s amazing, I love books, have you read this one....” It doesn’t even matter if they don’t read my genre. Readers get it. But someone who reads less than five books a year* is by definition someone who doesn’t really understand what books are for, much less what a writer is or does, and is left groping for whatever context our weird culture gives us.
Sometimes that’s “someone who makes a lot of money”. Are you a millionaire like John Grisham yet? Really? Why not? And because this conversation focuses on the book as a product, the inevitable bewildered question: then what are you writing for?
And on the other end there’s the people for whom books are Art, something studied in school or grimly ground through to acquire Culture. The revaluation that you are an Artist immediately puts them on the defensive; either they’re going to display plumage by talking about all the Very Meaningful Books they have read (or at least put strategically on display on their only bookshelf), or they’re going to do a reverse display and tell you about how they don’t have time for reading, haven’t read a thing since high school, if they did it would be nonfiction, etc.
Murphy’s Law always applies here. Those of us writing genre fiction always get the Art Guy who wants to tell us how we should be writing serious books, not wasting our time and talent, while writers on the literary end always get Product Guy telling them how they should be writing the next Twilight because That’s Where The Money Is.
(The final category are the people who don’t read, but their best friend’s husband’s cousin is ALSO A WRITER, isn’t that great, they’ll bring you their book since all readers and all books are alike! And because Murphy’s Law, this will inevitably be a sloppily edited vanity published and/or first draft novel in the genre you dislike the most.)
We aren’t a culture suited to understanding writers. So I don’t talk about my writing if I can avoid it. I’m socially awkward enough on my own, thanks.
* Almost half the US population, for the curious.
