I've been writing for a very long time with nothing to show publicly for it. Early on, I was just writing for fun, and that's what I said when people asked about my hobbies. When I got very excited about intending to write for publication, I talked about it to family and close friends. Everyone thought that was great and was very supportive. Like some others have mentioned, though, over the years, I've felt a bit judged for not having had any success yet. Inquiries about how the writing was going felt a little like people telling me I was wasting my time. Then, I lost my day job and had trouble finding another, and that's when I feel like questions started taking on a tone of "how are you contributing," and that's been a bit of a sting.
My father has been particularly bad with it since I lost my job. (My husband and I are calling it a "career change" or "soft retire" now.) He basically started demanding to read something I'd written. He claimed he enjoyed my writing and wanted to read something from a novel before he died, but I think he didn't believe I was actually writing. So I finally brought my laptop to his house to read him something... and he fell asleep during the second paragraph (of an action scene).
I used to say I was a writer when people asked how I made a living. It was true at the time, and if pressed, I'd follow up with descriptions of the technical documentation I wrote. Now, when someone (not close) asks, I get very dramatic, declare that I'm a kept woman, and then laugh uproariously as I flutter off somewhere else. I've also started saying to close people that I'm getting into "online freelance stuff." If they ask about it again, I say I'm happy with how that's going.
I don't talk about my writing anymore, and I'm not sure I'll ever willingly bring it up. I feel a lot of pressure, like everyone's waiting for it to happen. I've pretty much decided that I'm not going to talk about it again until I have something published and maybe not even then if I can still hide it. For now, though, I feel like I just need the freedom to fail in private.