Angela:  

I have a question that may be out of left field, but since you’ve been in writing a long time, I’d like your view to something I posted in my local Facebook writers group: 

“For those of you who have significant others or are dating someone, they will know you are a writer rather soon, right?  Well, how much do you expect them to be as excited about wanting to read what you write?  If they don’t show much enthusiasm about you being a writer or what you write, can that be a hindrance in your relationship or potential relationship?  

Obviously, significant others or those we are dating have their own lives and jobs and have to balance all that on top of spending time with us, and on the flip side, we may not get that excited about their jobs either, right?

We as writers do love people reading our work and liking it, and it’s exciting when people closest to us take the time to read our stuff, too.”

Your thoughts, please. 

Nobody in my family (including 2 husbands!) nor my adult children have read all of my books. I write in a genre they are not particularly interested in – about writing and publishing.

For Brian’s memoir about him being a cop, Blue Lives Matter: The Heart Behind the Badge, everybody in his family read it cover to cover and his mother read it twice.

None of my books are memoirs with that kind of excitement!!

Writers need to understand that our loved ones may not be interested in what we write and that’s okay! I would not be interested in following my son around all day for his welding job. I’d be bored out of my mind!! All of this certainly doesn’t mean family members can’t still get along.

Many writers and authors (not all!) are sort of like narcissists. And, I say that in the most loving way. We love reading our own writing more than anything else. We may not understand why a loved one does not want to read the brilliant words we’ve written. But, we need to check our egos at the door. If we need feedback that bad, we need to join a writer’s group. A writer will get far more honest feedback that way anyway.

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