Why Is Talking About My Creative Work So Hard?
After ten years working in an office with all the attendant icebreaker activities, I can tell you what I’d bring to a desert island, my favorite guilty pleasures, my most embarrassing childhood memory, and what superpower I’d like to have without batting an eye. I can talk myself and my experience up in an interview without a waver in my voice. I can show you the report, presentation, or charts I’ve created with zero anxiety about what changes you might suggest.
So why can’t I talk about my book?
I was surprised by how hard it was the first time I tried. Every time I try to describe my plot, it comes out sounding painfully amateurish and bad. I think my written summary and query materials are good – I hired an editor who also works as an agent to review them for me. I just can’t get it out of my mouth without becoming self-conscious, fumbling, and making it all sound like an idea I’ve just realized is bad as I’m saying it, instead of an entire book I’ve already written and edited several times (by the way I did finish that big edit – 99,800 words, hurray!) and that I very much love.
Sharing and presenting my work hasn’t been a problem for me in a long time. I used to routinely share reports and charts and requirements lists that were the culmination of many hours of long work, work I was proud of, and never felt like this or stumbled over my words. If someone found a mistake or didn’t like what I’d done, no big deal – I’ll change it. That’s why I’m showing it to them in the first place.
It’s not that I didn’t care if my work had mistakes or was poor quality, but I suppose it just hits different when it’s something you dug out of your soul. Pivot tables don’t make me feel anything.
(Okay, I admit that’s a lie, pivot tables make me feel intense organizational satisfaction, similar to watching machines place hundreds of things perfectly on How It’s Made, but you know what I mean).
I’m not any better at it yet. I know how to get better – practice – but also, ugh, I thought I was past stage-fright-related things at this point in my life. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with simply reading the shortest iteration of my summary, and I may just do that from now on.
I wish I’d had more opportunities to practice this skill rather than building up the almost-useless ability to reveal highly personal anecdotes in front of a group of bleary-eyed, near-strangers who’d rather be anywhere else at eight-fifteen in the morning.
Ask me about the time I instantly killed the mood by answering the question If you could time travel, Would you rather go forward or backward in time, and why? My answer, Back in time, because dinosaurs are cool, landed a little flat after five variations of back in time, to visit my grandmother one more time. And you know what? I didn’t even blink. Dinosaurs are cool, dammit. This, right here, is the attitude I need to rekindle, I think.
Not even a trace of self-consciousness.