8 Questions Never to Ask a Writer

Not to be churlish, and thanks for your interest in our work, but ....

Jul 06, 2023

WRITERS ARE funny creatures. We choose a vocation that requires many hours and long stretches of isolation, yet we require the participation of others – in the form of readers – to make our work meaningful. (If a writer publishes a book and no one reads it, does it really exist outside of the writer’s mind?) When we are not directly engaged in putting words on paper, we are still writing -- including thinking about and processing our work -- consciously or otherwise. This can often make us seem distracted at best or aloof at worst when we are amongst others, even though we crave human contact as much as the next non-writer.

We want affirmation for our work, but we often cannot or do not want to talk about it. Then again, all we want to do is talk about our work; writers are under the spell of an obsession. We have to be in order to get the job one. We are suspicious of those who talk too much about their work, however (big talk, no action) and superstitious about saying too much about it while we are in the thick of it.

All this makes us a mess – a social mess – and is in part why writers, who must believe they have important things to say (or else why write them?), are often introverts. Introversion is almost a requirement for being a writer. Those few writers who are extroverts perhaps tend toward collaborative projects – writing in workshops, in commercial settings as part of a team, or in the so-called writers’ rooms we hear so much about involving writing for television.

It is also why writers – except when a book is done and published and a writer has obligations to ferry the book into the marketplace by doing talks, readings, and interviews – might shy away from social encounters, period. We don’t mean to be churlish – we love the idea that you are interested in what we do and what we are working on. But all too often, that interest is only surface deep, and after we reply to an initial question, which might promise that there will be a deeper conversation with an interested reader, that avenue of conversation fizzles out or changes direction because – be honest now – you really are not that interested in hearing us talking about what we do, or what we are writing.

This often comes to us in the form of one or more of the following questions – impertinent questions you should never ask a writer. I, for one, have been asked every one of these questions over the years. It is never fun, it is almost always deflating, and it leaves a writer momentarily frustrated and depressed. Again, I don’t mean to be churlish, and I greatly appreciate your interest in my work. Just please think hard before you ask these eight questions:

1. How is the writing going?

We know you mean well, but if you want to start a conversation with a writer by bringing it to a grinding halt before it even begins, ask this question. Just the term “the writing” itself is a minefield of troubled ambiguities. “The writing” comes with a hint of sarcasm, diminishment, or disparagement, as if it is something one is playing at rather than a concerted effort, a commitment to a passion and a profession. Also, generally speaking, “the writing” is going badly. Writing starts out badly almost by its very nature, and the process of writing is turning something bad into something good -- if we are lucky. Also, the question itself is nearly impossible to answer, as there are so many different aspects to “the writing.” Mostly, we do not want to think of it in those terms. And if you ask us how it is going, you are just reminding us that at that very moment, we are not doing what we should be doing – sitting at our desk (or in the backyard or in bed) writing, and not making demeaning chit-chat about the thing that is most important to us.

2. What is the theme of your book?

Writers rarely think in terms of “theme.” That’s a holdover from middle-school and high-school English class. It’s enough to come up with an engaging narrative with sentences that make a reader want to continue to the next and the next. Sure – maybe the book is “about” something, but maybe it isn’t – not in the sense of the “themes” we wrote about in school. It’s just rarely uppermost in a writer’s mind while writing, and as well-meaning as the question may be, its reductive and cannot help but disappoint a writer and make him feel misunderstood. (So many things will make a writer feel misunderstood. That’s why I am trying to help here.) More interesting: read the book and you decide about the theme.

3. I borrowed your book from the library, or, its close relative, When your book is in the library, that’s when you’ll know you’ve made it.

Libraries are wonderful places. Writers make use of them all the time. No writer will be disappointed to know that his book is carried in libraries. That being said, please don’t share the fact with the writer that you borrowed his book from a library rather than having purchased it from a bookstore. It puts the writer in an awkward position – happy that you have read the book, sad that a precious sale was lost. Did I tell you that writers earn their living based on the number of books sold? As far as books being carried in a library being a symbol of having “made it,” a writer would much rather hear that you saw his book in a store. Even better would be to share the store’s name with the writer.

4. What kind of books do you write? Mystery? Science fiction? Romance? Fantasy?

Look. There is nothing wrong with genre fiction. I love reading police procedurals. Few but the most successful writers, however, want to be pigeonholed by genre. Omit the presumption that the work belongs to a genre, and let the writer answer the question, What kind of books do you write? Even better, look it up and find the answer on your own before asking the embarrassing (to the writer) question.

5. I have an idea for a book. Want to hear it?

No. And please don’t tell me anything about it. This is as much to prevent any potential legal action against me as it is to protect myself from boredom. Besides, ideas are cheap. It’s only the execution that counts.

6. I’m a writer, too, you know. I just have some kind of block. That’s it – I have writer’s block.

While a professional writer might sometimes find himself stuck, we don’t indulge ourselves with notions such as “writer’s block.” And if you are so blocked that you have never been able to write, then perhaps you are not blocked. Perhaps you are not a writer after all.

7. I wrote a book. It hasn’t been published, but maybe you can read it and tell me what you think of it and give a copy to your agent? Or, its more succinct cousin, Can you help me get an agent?

The relationship between a writer and his agent is sacrosanct. One of the reasons is that it is incredibly difficult to get an agent. Once you have signed with an agent, you don’t want to take advantage of that relationship by using it for purposes not directly related to the peddling of your own work. To put it simply, you don’t want to do anything to annoy your agent. That being said, I did once tell my then-agent about a friend’s work. She was interested enough to suggest I put them in touch with each other, and the story had a happy ending: They decided to work together, and my friend’s book was something of a sensation – he wrote a bestseller and the agent made more money on his book than on any book she represented up until that point, way more money than she ever made off my books. But this was an outlier, a rare exception. The answer to the question is a polite, I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.

8. Can I find your books on Amazon?

As you know, you can pretty much find anything and everything on Amazon, books or otherwise. So the answer to this question is almost certainly “yes.” That being said, you put the writer in a bind when you ask this, because as much as we rely and depend on online retailers (i.e., Amazon) for the vast majority of our book sales, almost all writers would prefer that you buy their books from independent bookstores. We earn the same mere pittance from the sale either way; we just believe in supporting the mom-and-pop shops that are one of the last vestiges of a local, literate community.

Hey, did you like this edition of Everything Is Broken? If so, please consider clicking on the “LIKE” button at the very end of this message. It matters to the gods of Substack.