It was evening. February. In the blazing white light of a hospital waiting room she told me she hadn’t read a personal essay published in our local newspaper because it felt invasive to read my words. I’d submitted it because I wanted it to be read. It took a difficult topic — the anniversary of a great trauma, and humanized it through my experience and recent PTSD diagnosis. I told her that writers write to be read and there is nothing invasive about reading my published work. It’s there for everyone to read. I also told her how strange it was that she wouldn’t read it. It was fine if she didn’t, but it shouldn’t be because of some false idea of privacy. I have no expectation of privacy as a long time writer and journalist.
My words didn’t move her.
It was a cold November evening, and I was on the phone with a man who I’d been spending time with who had shown no interest or curiosity about my writing. As I wandered through the rooms of my house chatting, he said something that jogged a realization: he’d never even Googled me, despite me telling him about my career. At first, the anonymity had been nice but it was starting to feel odd. By then, I knew his full name and enough of his history thanks to my cursory internet search to understand who I was talking to. He said that made him uncomfortable. I told him it made me uncomfortable as a writer to be talking to someone who not only hadn’t read what I’d written, but hadn’t tried to.
“I want to get to know you for you,” he told me. He thought this was a sweet thing to say, but to me it stung.
“What I write is me. You can’t know me if you won’t read what I’ve had published. It’s extremely uncomfortable that you aren’t interested in my life’s work,” I said.
He was defensive. I was turned off.
Writers write to be read, and when our work is published the expectation is that others will read it. Hopefully those others will include those who know and support us, as well as those we don’t know. Reaching people beyond our spheres is a form of success in writing.
So when someone doesn’t read what we have published, what does that say? Nothing good, that’ for sure. As a writer, I want friends and a partner who are supportive of my work. Someone showing no interest or curiosity is a red flag. I have learned over the last two-plus decades that you can learn a lot about a person by how they approach your writing. Enthusiastic readers are wonderful, but so are the quiet readers who don’t make a show of reading everything I write. I only know they do by subtle clues in conversations. Overall though, I have learned that not to trust anyone who thinks it’s invasive to read what is my life’s work. Invasive is prying. It’s peering in my open windows, as the ex of an ex once did. It’s not reading my publicly published work.
Reading things I’ve written shows a respect for what I do and love.
To be clear, it’s not that I expect everyone close to me to read every word I write. I don’t. But an interest in my work is crucial, same as I want to be interested in what’s important to those around me — no matter what industry they are in.
