Posted: 07/18/2014 1:26 pm EDT Updated: 07/18/2014 1:59 pm EDT
It was just a casual conversation, and although I bristled when I heard the words, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t argue, I didn’t set her straight. I can’t even tell you why. But later, I couldn’t stop thinking about what my friend said. She asked for a favor.
“You’re not working, so you probably have time to…”
“Of course I’ll do it,” I said.
Later I realized that, in my reticence, I’d let my friend believe she was right about me. I wondered, is this what non-creatives think of writers? That we don’t work? When, in fact, we are working constantly, whether or not our word counts, publishing credits or bank balances reflect it.
Even when we are not clacking out words on the keyboard — butt in chair, as Anne Lamott says — we are always writing in our minds and hearts and souls. We agonize for hours trying to get one sentence perfect. We research. We edit. We rewrite. We pitch. We polish. We rewrite some more. We recall entire conversations from ten years ago and fragments of yesterday’s dialog to use in our stories. Random bits like, “You’re not working, so…”