A Jen Too Many

Oh, yes! That's right! I have a blog. I suppose I really should update it. Somehow.

Actually I have thought about it before this, but I can't bring myself to actually post a new entry, because, well, people I know, like my family, will be reading this, and that is just too, too intimidating. So, I write, and I polish, and then I rewrite and polish some more, and in the end I have a really great essay on how my family can't ever figure out what they want to eat, that will never see the light of day.

Maybe someday I'll anonymously enter it into the Erma Bombeck contest.

Reason #101 why I will never be a best selling novelist. "What? Read my writing? Are you crazy?"

I belong to a writing list and this is a topic that has come up before. A large number of us are shy (not all of us mind you - an equally large number are not shy at all) which makes it difficult if you want to be a successful fiction writer. After all, if you write technical manuals, web content, or magazine articles you are fairly anonymous (I know an enormously successful magazine writer from that list - you name the major magazine, she's had articles in it - but, unless you are obsessive about reading bylines, you would never recognize her name.)

Writing fiction, however, is very different from selling fiction, and selling fiction tends to be very personality driven. It's not enough to write a brilliant and fascinating novel. You have to travel around and do book signings, interviews on local radio stations and television shows, have a website and interact with your fans. And, since fiction does seem to draw a disproportionate number of writers who are people who really prefer interacting with the characters in their head ...

Look at it this way: The writer puts in weeks and months of solitary work, only to be dragged out of their nest, like Punxsutawney Phil, to blink painfully in the light of attention and publicity when the time comes to convince people their book is really worth publishing / buying / reading.

The problem with being a writer is, you can't help yourself. You write. You have to write. It's a compulsion. And when you write, you usually want someone else to read it. Having a reader is an essential part of the process. Writing that is never read is incomplete. What's the point of putting all that work into finding just the right word to convey the exact way fog feels on your skin, if no-one but you ever reads it? Oh, sure, you've got the satisfaction of personal accomplishment, but it's not enough.

I have found that just as much as I feel driven to write, I feel driven to find readers, which is a painful process. Even bad writing involves delving into yourself. Show someone else your writing and you show them a little piece of your soul. That's frightening. So frightening that I can rarely do it. Essays, fiction, poetry - they make me too vulnerable. Much better to keep them forever in electronic form, locked away in sterile little kilobytes of ones and zeroes.

Wait a second - how did I let my sister talk me into this again?