Why I Don’t Talk About Writing Much in Real Life

I don’t usually tell people I’m writing a book. They tend to find out indirectly—through family members who heard it from other family members, who apparently heard it from my rabbits.

I’m not sure how the rabbits found out. They can’t read as far I know. But once the information is loose in the family network, it spreads fast. Suddenly someone is asking about the book in a tone that suggests I’ve already explained it to them in detail. I haven’t.

That’s when the questions start. Reasonable ones. Normal ones.

And that’s when things get uncomfortable.

The Title Trainwreck

The moment someone asks, “What’s it called?” you can feel the room change. It’s subtle, but it’s there. A small shift in posture. A mental brace. This is the point of no return.

You say the title.

They squint.

“What?”

You repeat it.

Slower.

A little louder.

Now you’re both smiling, but for very different reasons. They’re being polite. You’re just freezing your face, praying to not invite any more iterations of pain and suffering.

The problem is that titles aren’t meant to explain themselves. A good title isn’t a literary summary—it’s a logo. A marketing tool. It’s a compression of the genre and emotional weight of the story into a few words meant to interest a potential reader at a glance.

But that entire compression only makes sense in a conversation if you’ve both lived inside the book.

After hundreds of pages, false starts, rewrites, and quiet late-night victories, the title feels obvious. I hear it and everything comes with it: characters, moments, regrets, consequences. To someone outside the book, though, it’s just a weird—but hopefully catchy—noise arrangement.

That’s the part that makes the exchange uncomfortable. You suddenly feel defensive about a thing that isn’t built for conversation. Its build for the intangible emotion of compulsive desire.

So you repeat the title one more time, nod like this is normal, and quietly accept the punishment.

“What’s It About?” Is Deceptive

On the surface, it’s a completely reasonable question. It might be the most reasonable question someone can ask about a book. But you don’t realize how hard it is until the first time you actually try to answer it out loud, to another human being, without notes or diagrams.

Because what the question is really asking is unanswerable.

It’s asking you to flatten years of thinking into a few sentences. To strip out nuance and an emotional experience that requires going on an entire journey to build—and still sound coherent while you’re doing it.

That’s a tall order for a conversation happening next to a shopping cart.

Most attempts start well enough. You open with a broad description. A setting. A premise. Then you feel the need to clarify one small thing. That clarification needs another clarification. Suddenly you’re six sentences deep, gesturing with your hands, and watching the listener’s eyes glaze over as they politely nod along.

At that point, you have two options. You can keep digging, hoping the answer eventually circles back to something interesting. Or you can abort the mission and land the plane with something safe and easy.

That second option is worse.

Because the version of the story that survives that process usually sounds boring. Generic. Like something that’s already been done a hundred times before. This is because the only way to make a compact summary in this type of conversation is to relate what you've done to something the listener already knows. Which strips out all the unique, emotional, and interesting things of your story.

The frustrating part is that there is a great answer, but not to the question they've asked. This is because the question they've asked is, in fact, unanswerable. It's too broad—like asking someone to describe a color without using comparisons.

So the trick is to ignore "What's it about?" and instead answer "Who is it about, and why should I care?"

Summary Shenanigans

If you try to summarize the plot, things go downhill fast.

On paper, the plot sounds generic. It sounds like every other book in the genre, because stripped of context and texture, most plots do. A hero does a thing. Someone opposes them. Events happen. Something changes. Congratulations—you’ve just described half the fiction section.

That kind of summary completely misses why I wrote the book in the first place. The book isn’t “about” what happens. It’s about what accumulates along the way. The decisions. The struggles. The moments that don’t look important until they stack up and finally explode. You can't explain that in a paragraph at a Christmas party.

So maybe you pivot and try themes instead.

“It’s about identity, duty, and sacrifice.”

Which is all true. And it’s also the moment you realize you now sound like a grad student defending a thesis, or someone pitching a panel discussion at a conference. You can practically hear the italics creeping into your voice.

Even when the thematic answer is accurate, it feels wrong. It feels like you’re overselling something that should be discovered, not announced. Stories don’t work because someone told you what they were about. They work because you spent enough time inside them to discover and experience what it was about for yourself.

This is usually the point where I stop trying. There’s no clean version of the answer that fits into a casual conversation without sanding off the edges that made the book worth writing. Any summary short enough to survive the exchange ends up hollow. And any answer honest enough to matter is far too long for where the conversation actually is.

Imposter Syndrome

Until the book is done—finished, published, and readable by people who aren’t legally obligated to be nice to me—I feel like an imposter. One of those people who talks about writing but never actually finishes anything. The kind who says, “I’m trying to be a writer,” and people nod their head and assume I'm poor and can't feed my family.

I know most people mean well and are usually polite and supportive. But until the work exists in a form that can stand on its own, it feels like I’m borrowing an identity I haven’t earned yet—like Stolen Valor, but for writing.

So I wait until it's done to talk about it.

If it's done, I'm not an imposter anymore...I'm just poor and can't feed my family.

How to Handle It

The simplest solution is that I mostly don’t handle it at all. I dodge the conversation whenever possible and avoid talking about the book until it reaches the beta reading stage.

If someone asks what it’s about and I can’t escape, I give them something intentionally bland. “It’s an epic fantasy, kind of like Lord of the Rings, but with an evil empire instead of orcs.” That’s usually enough. It’s accurate in the broadest, least interesting sense, and it doesn’t invite follow-up questions. Which is the goal.

Occasionally, it doesn’t work. Some people are persistent. In those cases, I resort to more advanced techniques. I’ll point somewhere over their shoulder and yell, “Look at that!” At which point, I run away. This method is not foolproof, but it has a decent success rate.

Once the book is in beta, things change. At that point, it’s essentially done. Set in stone. The questions don’t need answers anymore because the story can answer them better than I ever could in conversation. If someone really wants to know what it’s about, I can invite them to read it and let the book do the explaining.

There’s also the added bonus that you might pick up another beta reader—assuming they actually read it. That’s never guaranteed. But at least now the conversation ends with something concrete instead of awkward speculation and a polite smile.

Conclusion

So that’s why I don’t talk about writing much in real life. It’s not secrecy or insecurity—just timing. Some things make more sense once they’re finished.

For what it’s worth, the book is finished. I’m in the final read-through now, before release. If you want updates that don’t involve awkward small talk or me repeating the title too loudly, you can join the newsletter below. I promise the rabbits won’t bite—mostly.