Lately I've been using the hash tag #lifelessons on twitter*, which is a term that I use to highlight things I learn after doing something dumb. Like, how to use the soap sprayer at the do-it-yourself car wash without getting hit in the face; or, if you take apart the vacuum cleaner to clean the filters, you should remember how it all fits together. I've been doing a lot of these "dumb" or mundane things recently because I am currently without a job. School's out for the summer--cue song--and I chose to come to Austin with the fiance and work on my novel while he goes to his real job and gets paid real money. It sometimes gets a little awkward when people ask what I'm doing here (not to mention where I'm from--see earlier post), and I've even had one person refer to my role as the "trophy fiancee." Har har. I decided to take that one as a misguided compliment.
Of course I do tell people that I'm here working on my book (or "my novel," or "my writing," depending on my mood) which inevitably makes me feel like a fraud. I'm not lying; I am working on something that I hope will become a novel...someday. But the state of "being a writer" seems like such a lofty concept that I'm never sure if I'm embodying it now, or if I ever will.
It's a topic that often comes up among my peers and in my writing workshops. One of my professors (a "real" writer, she has two books that one can actually purchase from booksellers) is fond of saying that the writing process is like masturbation--everyone does it, but no one wants to talk about it. In other words, it's highly personal. You'll sometimes see depictions of writers in movies or on television: set to a manic score, a solitary person (usually male), pounds out words on a typewriter (more dramatic, more tactile than a computer), balls up papers and throws them into the trash, and then....montage over, writer magically delivers bound manuscript to agent/publisher.
The problem with these romanticized visions, and the highly personal and individualized nature of the writing process, is that when I'm working toward that finished product, I'm constantly thinking: am I doing it wrong?
Hence the reason for feeling fraudulent, and for being annoyed, and then evasive, when people ask, "How's it going?" "What's your book about?" "How much is written?"
