Please Don’t Speak to the Writer!
Writers write because that is their preferred method
of communicating to others and the world in general. The ideal writing job is to be isolated from our subject and “everyone else” out there in our noisy world.
Writers don’t make good diplomats or sales people. We
don’t do small talk or schmooze. Most of us don’t like crowds or large
gatherings of any kind – even sometimes our own family. It’s not personal, it’s
just the way we were made; to be alone to mull things over. And yes, we have a
tendency to overthink things sometimes.
Most writers are akin to hibernating bears - solitary,
clannish, and grumpy when crossed. Writers are only garrulous within their
sub-species – other writers, where they talk endlessly over tea about
their genres, sentence structure, and the oxford comma.
There are two main types of writers – straight up journalists
– the who-what-where-when-how-and-why crowd who can only deal in facts and
reality, and the creative writers who walk among the general population constantly toying with an endless supply of ideas in their minds and birthing whole other worlds within their
imaginations. Sometimes you’ll find a writer who is a mixture of those two
worlds who can easily cross genres within a single breath.
Writers are always thinking and observing and can be
obsessively busy even while sitting still in a doctor’s office. Sometimes they
are so preoccupied with internal dialogue that they often resent any intrusions
or distractions to their thought processes.
Writers are often like that unassuming rock you kicked
over in the forest – nothing to look at on the upside, but teeming with
activity, ideas, and life underneath if you happen to stop and take a closer
look.
And sometimes we don’t have the most pleasant of
personalities, but we’re often left alone to mull, so we don’t get much
practice.
The best writers are their own worst salespeople. We
don’t schmooze, remember? We often get tongue-tied when we attempt to sell our
work with a sales pitch. But when provoked, the only thing sharper than our
tongues is our pen, or keyboard, and we have learned to wield it wickedly.
