The Writing-Practice Journal

Curiosity of Others -- "What are you writing"

Everyone acts interested in a writer’s work. “What are you working on nowadays?” is the question writers often get from lay people. Just start telling them what your plans are and see or sense the yawn in the other party. Their faces suddenly grow long, their brows crinkle, and their eyes start searching around the room as if hoping for someone else throw them a lifesaver to keep them from drowning.

Over the years, I have concluded that this curiosity is not genuine and people resort to such a question when they run out of things to say, aside from the fact that they are seen while talking to a writer could brand them as highbrows. In addition to the fear of boring the others, this maybe one of the reasons we may find it very difficult to discuss our work-in-progress.

If we say we have nothing on the table, we may be in a limbo and it could be the truth, or we may be considering something or other we are not sure of yet. Since telling about an iffy thing would be committing ourselves to it, we might take the escape route any way we can. Some of may even feel jinxed by talking about our projects and may drop what we are writing. Then, there are times when we have no immediate projects, but the muse may show up, and we may start planning something during the next five minutes after we have announced we have nothing dripping down from our pens. What is more, some people may try to kindle our imaginations with their own life story.

Because of these and possibly a few more reasons, some of us with other day jobs may conceal from people that we are writers, or we become hermits; however, this is a negative stance. If we evade people, how are we going to write about them? In addition, opportunities may show up through acquaintances, opportunities we do not want to miss, when as writers, we should be able to speak up for ourselves.

What to do, then, when someone asks us what we are working on? One thing we can do is to prepare ourselves ahead of time. A short explanation, something in a sentence, something that wouldn’t take more than a minute or two to people who seem interested should be enough. Afterwards, changing the conversation tactfully may be wise. Something like: “I’m writing a World War II story. Talking about that war, do you remember Casablanca? Too bad they are not making movies like that anymore.”

For most of us, just telling what we are doing without going into too much detail should be enough, or if we feel we do not want to talk about it, we can have a clever answer ready. Whatever we say keeping it short and to the point should do the trick.