I went to a fundraiser dinner/dance/auction thing the other night for my son's school. I was walking around with a casual acquaintance looking at the baskets available for the silent auction, and we passed a basket of paperback books. She said, "Oh, I want to know about the writing thing you go to." I was flabbergasted. She must have meant the Central Ohio Fiction Writers conference that I went to last fall, because I am not a member of RWA (yet) so I don't actually "go" anywhere writerly except here on the internet. The thing is, I didn't tell anyone except my husband that I was going to that COFW thing. I did post a picture of myself and my close personal friend (okay, my idol who I would stalk if I lived closer) Suzanne Brockmann on facebook, but I didn't caption it with "Hey, look at me, pretending I'm going to be a real writer some day!"
Which means my husband outed me. I imagine it went something like this:
My friend: "Why isn't Teri here at the cross country meet this weekend?"
My husband: "She went to a writer's conference in Columbus."
My friend: "No kidding! I didn't know she writes."
My husband: "Yes, my wonderful wife can do anything, and now she wants to be a romance writer, and I'm sure she'll succeed and I will support her all the way to the bank."
(okay, maybe he didn't say any of that except the part about hoping to become rich and famous. He's a bit delusional, but I love him anyway).
My friend: "That's so cool! I write, too. I'll have to talk to her about it."
How anticlimactic! Here I am thinking that when/if the people that I see everyday find out that I aspire to writerhood, they will line up on Fountain Square, strip me naked and point and laugh. Granted, it could still happen. One friend down, several dozen to go.
This got me to thinking about how many other things have been so much bigger in my mind than they are in real life. And vice versa. How many things, that I thought I would breeze through, became way bigger challenges that I expected. For me, the latter example is motherhood. Yeah, I know, I might have considered that being responsible for another life would be tough, but I had NO IDEA. Thank God, I had no idea. I probably would have kept my legs crossed.
What about you? What things have you been terrified about that turned out to be no big deal? And what did you think was going to be easy peasey but turned out to be a ginormous mountain?
I still don't like people finding out I write, especially my fellow English academics--but surprisingly, they're usually either very supportive or in "awe" of my ability to write novels. Ha! I've even had them ask me for advice (snort) about a writing schedule (hahaha) and my process (wheeze...Twitter, Blogger, Facebook, twitter, email, pee, get a snack...)
ReplyDeleteBut hey, now you've made a new writer friend! And it's SO wonderful to be able to talk "shop" with people face-to-face.
My husband has called me his "retirement plan" for years. I keep telling him I have lots of multi-published friends whose spouses have not gotten to retire--very few writers make megabucks, even the fairly successful ones. But the man loves his delusions.
ReplyDeleteMost things I've done in life I've leapt into without a lot of risk consideration. Marriage, 6-month backpacking trip through Europe w/hubs (w/o much cash), kids. Writing.
I find if you dwell on the things that could go wrong, or on how hard something will be, you just paralyze yourself. And paralysis scares me more than anything.
Most of the things in my life goes one way or the other.
ReplyDeleteEither way, my life is never boring - even if it's only exciting in my imagination. ;-)