Writers, help me out here: why is it so hard to tell people what our books are about?
I mean, seriously.
I used to think it was just me, and my complete inability to, you know, say words to other human beings–especially human beings I respected and admired–coupled with my own insecurities about Claiming/Reclaiming The Identity Of A Writer, particularly when in the company of other writers.
Take last summer, when My Awesome Friend Rie was in town, and we were having lunch with The Equally Awesome James Kennedy. James asked me what Forward March was about, and when he wasn’t satisfied with my usual, Mean Girls-inspired response of “sexually active band geeks,” I had no idea what to tell him.
“Well…there’s…this girl…and then…trombones…and…um…blurp?” is approximately what I said. It is a wonder he did not get up and leave the restaurant immediately.
But this was the same lunch where, when asked to name the best thing about my college trip to Italy–a trip that included performing in the Pantheon and the Duomo, touring museums and catacombs, and seeing the Pope say Palm Sunday Mass–I replied without hesitation, “THE ICE CREAM.”
“It’s called gelato,” James reminded me, “and you can get it here, too. Right up the block at Paciugo.”
Blurp.
I’ve had an even harder time describing my current WIP to people. There’s no quick little quip in Mean Girls about “so there’s this kid and there’s a band and also it’s a crisis of faith and then there’s a wedding?”
But then Awesome Writing Teacher Molly Backes posted this week at The Debutante Ball about the (eventual!) need to have a pitch for your book–”if for no other reason than a million people will ask you what your book is about, and it’s easier to memorize a pithy sentence or two than to do what I do, which is to stumble through an incoherent string of random words, sounding like an idiot: ‘Um, well? It’s a YA novel, so coming of age…it’s about a teenage girl…she’s in high school…um, there’s like…well, she has issues…you know…it’s in Iowa? So there’s Iowa stuff. And…it’s…yeah. You know.”
Now, Molly is smart. And as I learned from taking her YA writing class at the Story Studio last summer, she is definitely capable of saying words to other human beings. And I bet if you asked her to tell you her favorite thing about Italy, she wouldn’t say the ice cream. (Not that I know whether or not Molly’s been to Italy. Maybe I should ask her.)
So what’s the deal here?
Why is it so hard to tell people what our books are about?
And is anyone else totally craving gelato now?
Blurp?