The “Writer’s Curse”: Why Nobody Actually Wants to Hear About Your Novel

There is nothing in this world that will clear a room faster than admitting you're writing a novel.

Well, perhaps admitting you're a smoker. But at least smokers get a designated area. There is a polite, marked-off zone for them to stand in the freezing rain while they indulge their habit. Writers? We're just expected to disappear quietly into the void until we've either finished the manuscript or come to our senses and returned to a respectable career in accounting.

If you're a writer, you've probably found yourself in the same situation I did the other night.

I was at one of the few dinner parties my wife and I still get invited to. To be fair, most of our friends have seen me corner an innocent bystander and spend twenty minutes explaining why a fictional character's motivation doesn't make sense, so invitations have understandably become less frequent over the years.

Before we left, my wife gave me the standard instruction.

"Act normal."

A completely unreasonable expectation, but I agreed to try.

Unfortunately, after a couple of glasses of wine, someone asked the dreaded question.

"So, what are you up to these days?"

Now, there are moments in life when honesty is the best policy.

This wasn't one of them.

I should have lied.

I should have said I was learning pottery. Or restoring antique furniture. Or training ferrets for competitive athletics.

Instead, I made the mistake of telling the truth.

"I'm writing a novel."

That was when the show started.

Their face cycled through approximately seven emotional states in three seconds. I recognised the look immediately. Every writer does.

I'd seen it before.

I knew exactly what was coming.

The Seven Stages of Social Doom

1. The Polite Interest

They smile.

It's a nice smile. A professional smile.

The sort of smile people use when they've just discovered their neighbour keeps exotic reptiles.

They lean in slightly.

"Oh," they're thinking. "A creative type."

2. The Brief Admiration

For one glorious second, you're Stephen King.

Or J.K. Rowling.

Or at the very least someone whose book is currently being fought over by half of Hollywood.

You can almost see them imagining the book deal, the film adaptation and the interview on Graham Norton.

By this point I've usually started mentally spending the royalties myself.

A small cottage in the countryside.

Maybe a writing shed.

Possibly a moat.

Then reality returns.

3. The Confusion

This is where the cracks begin to show.

You can practically hear the gears turning.

Why would a grown adult voluntarily spend hundreds of hours staring at a blinking cursor?

Why not learn a language?

Take up running?

Watch an entire box set in a weekend like a normal person?

The whole thing starts to seem suspicious.

4. The Dawning Realisation

This is my favourite stage.

You can actually watch it happen.

It's the moment they realise you aren't a tortured literary genius.

You're just someone who spends Sunday evenings arguing with people who don't exist.

People, I should add, who often refuse to do what they're told.

If non-writers think we're in control of our characters, they've clearly never tried getting one from Chapter Three to Chapter Four without them suddenly deciding to start a fight or fall in love with the wrong person.

5. The "Oh, That's Nice" Dismissal

They stop leaning in.

They take a small step backwards.

Their eyes begin scanning the room.

Not obviously.

Just enough to locate the drinks trolley, the buffet table, or a more stable human being to talk to.

Then comes the phrase.

"Oh, that's nice."

Nobody has ever meant less by three words.

6. The "I've Got a Great Idea for a Book" Pitch

Suddenly, they're interested again.

Not in your novel, obviously.

In theirs.

Or more accurately, the novel they would definitely write if they had the time.

What follows is usually ten minutes of increasingly complicated plot summaries involving time travel, secret government experiments, serial killers, dragons, and at least one talking animal.

The desire not to appear rude temporarily overcomes their desire to escape.

You nod.

You smile.

You wonder if this is what hostage negotiators feel like.

7. The Strategic Exit

Eventually even they realise the conversation has run its course.

They pat you on the shoulder.

Mutter something about another drink.

Then disappear into the crowd and are never seen again.

Possibly entering some form of witness protection programme.

So Why Do We Keep Doing It?

If writing novels involves social awkwardness, plot holes, self-doubt, caffeine dependency and long conversations with imaginary people, why do we keep doing it?

Honestly, I'm not sure anyone completely knows. I certainly don't.

But there's just something addictive about it.

One minute you're sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee that's gone cold because you've forgotten it exists. The next, you're trying to decide whether a person who doesn't exist would realistically lie to another person who doesn't exist about something that never actually happened.

Writing is ridiculous when you stop and think about it.

We invent people.

We give them problems.

Then we spend six months trying to solve problems we deliberately created in the first place. No wonder my wife thinks I'm crazy!

Half the time we're stressed because a fictional character has made a terrible decision, despite the inconvenient fact that we are the ones who made them do it.

It's essentially creating your own emergencies for entertainment.

And yet there's something I find brilliant about it.

For a few hours, the bills, the car repairs, the overflowing inbox and whatever fresh chaos the real world has cooked up can all wait.

Instead, I get to disappear somewhere else.

A place entirely of my own making.

Then, before I know it, it's midnight, the coffee is cold, and I've somehow spent three hours arguing with myself over a paragraph that nobody else will ever know existed.

And tomorrow I'll probably do exactly the same thing again.

A Message to My Fellow Scribblers

So to the novelists currently hiding in spare bedrooms, coffee shops and cluttered home offices, wrestling with plot holes the size of the Grand Canyon:

Keep going.

Sure, the bloke at the dinner party thinks you've lost your mind.

In fairness, he may have a point.

Most people don't spend six months worrying about whether a fictional detective would realistically order oat milk.

Most people don't rewrite the same paragraph seventeen times only to decide the first version was better.

Most people don't lose sleep because two imaginary people aren't communicating properly.

Yet here we are.

And next time somebody asks what you've been up to, don't tell them about the novel.

Tell them you're training ferrets for competitive athletics.

Tell them you're a part-time vampire hunter.

Tell them you've started a revolutionary paper-clip ranking system.

Tell them anything.

Trust me.

It'll be easier on everyone.

Then wait for them to wander off and get back to arguing with imaginary people.

After all, they're the only ones who really understand why we do this in the first place.