"So Have You Published Anything?"

You've heard this one before, right?

You tell someone you're a writer, and almost the first words out of his mouth are "oh, so do you have a book published, then?"

And yet...no, it's not in there.

Unless, of course, it's "I have some really interesting things that have happened to me--I should write a book," as though the two are even REMOTELY related to one another (okay, they're a little related, but not much, certainly not as much as, or in the way that, people seem to think).


People have such a distorted view of what it takes to get from point "I have a way with words" to point "I have a section of the bookshelf with my name on it." They seem to think that simply finishing a book means you're 95% of the way there. And they always seem vaguely disappointed if you tell them "well, I've written a couple books, but nothing's in print, yet." Like you've morally failed them somehow, like maybe you accidentally sent in hair dolls along with your manuscript so the editor would know how much you care about her--whoops! Faux pas!

That's another thing they think--that you just send things to an editor directly, and then they go into print.

HA.

Oh, you wrote a book? Let me just publish that now! 

Weirdly, they also seem unduly impressed about the things that seem, to me, like much-smaller stops along the way. I can't tell you how many times I've had people give me the impressed "whoa" when I tell them I write for the Huffington Post--a place which doesn't pay me and publishes approximately 3,172,893 articles daily.

But they've heard of that, so it resonates in a way that the achingly-more-difficult-to-achieve first McSweeney's yes never will.

I understand that this isn't out of spite or cruelty. It's not even out of ignorance, really, or at least not out of egregious ignorance--after all, how much do you know about the specifics of career advancement for bricklayers?

If you're a bricklayer, or related to one, you're disqualified from this rhetorical exercise.

Still, because I'm a fragile spun-sugar person balancing-while-twirling on a pinpoint, self-esteem wise, this perfectly honest question always feels like a perfectly-placed kidney punch.

Why are you making me talk about the fact that no, I'm not there yet? Why are you pressing your thumbs into the open wound that is my self-lacerating string of submissions and rejections? Why are you so painfully unaware of the fact that what I do is REALLY, REALLY, HARD? Ouch! IT HURTS!

So here's my PSA: it makes sense to ask the self-professed author where she's published.

No matter what she says in response, just pretend you're impressed.

You'll be doing her a mitzvah.