What do you do?

So I decided that I would start up a blog chronicling my writing and my attempts at publishing said writing.

I also realized pretty early on in the planning stages that the website was also my attempt to justify being able to call myself a writer.  That’s an idea I’ve been rolling over and over in my thoughts since it reared its ugly doubt-provoking head: Do I have to justify that title to myself or anyone else?  I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, mostly using it for pure fun and enjoyment but other times using it as a way to escape the more difficult times in life.  Surely writing as much as I have and for as long as I have, I could feel at least a little okay with calling myself a writer.  That would be a big fat nope.

The word trips up my tongue every time.  Not that I’ve spoken it aloud in connection to my name very often.  The very thought is enough to inspire just a bit of panic and terror.

I struggled with the idea of telling other people that I was a writer for the past year and a half.  I mean, after all, I have no publishing credits to my name, no agent, no nothing expect for one half edited rough draft, many half finished novels and many short stories that are probably better left to the back corners of the filing cabinet.

I’ve called myself a writer in front of the Engineer and he likes it and supports it.  My parents and in-laws know that I want to write for a living.  I told one close friend that I was working on a book and I wanted to make a career out of writing.  She was supportive and seemed genuinely happy for me.

But when asked by anyone for the last eight years, What do you do, I would say I’m a stay at home mom.  That answer always gets an appreciative nod or a wide-eyed “That’s harder than people give any credit for.”  My secret identity was still safe with that answer, no one had to know that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.  But my youngest, the girl child, turned five and Kindergarten loomed on the horizon.  I began to worry about what I was going to say when people asked me What do you do?

Then the Engineer got a new job in a different state and so we moved this past May.  We got the kids signed up for school and I made a decision.  No one here knows me and it was the perfect time to start attaching the word Writer to my name because they wouldn’t know me as anything else.

I got my first chance to do it not long after we moved.  A nice older gentleman came by with a packet of papers to welcome us to the neighborhood.  He asked me what the Engineer and I did for a living and I didn’t hesitate, I told him I was a writer…..and then he said something I wasn’t prepared for: What have you published?  Well crap.

I don’t remember what I said because my brain has kindly blocked the rest of the incident out for me but I’m pretty sure I mumbled something along the lines of not being published yet and I’m also a stay at home mom and please can we just change the subject so I don’t feel like I need to go die of embarrassment right now.  He frowned when I told him that I hadn’t published anything yet.  I read many things into that frown, things that bruised an already tender ego.  When I added that I was a stay at home mom I remember him giving me an encouraging nod and saying “Excellent.  Now that’s an important job many people don’t give enough credit.”

The incident led me to rethink the whole telling people I’m a writer thing.  And a quick google search showed me that I’m not alone in my indecision to attach the word to my name.  I also realized that the more I thought about it, the madder I got.  Not really at the man but at myself.  The question, Why should I be embarrassed? played again and again in my head.  It’s not like I lied: I am a writer.

It’s been a couple of months since that incident and, after my initial mortification at the gentleman’s question and my inability to give a good response, I decided it hadn’t been the end of the world.  And I’m close to convincing myself that, if asked the question again, I won’t be embarrassed by my inability to give an answer.  Instead I’ll hold my head high and say Nothing yet but I’m working on it.  I hope to say it with enough confidence and conviction that they won’t be able to doubt that I will publish eventually.  Or at the very least they’ll decide I’m a little unstable when it comes to that course of conversation and steer clear of any follow up questions.  A girl can dream.

Have you struggled with telling others you’re a writer?