I’ve tried sitting down over the past few days to write something…anything. It doesn’t matter what; a shopping list would’ve done. Instead, I’ve made every excuse possible not to, which is opposite to my usual patterns and habits. Here I am now, though. A little tired, a little careworn as I’ve been thrust back into our usual Monday routine and I’ve forgotten just how tiring it can be to launch from one chore to another. Never mind.
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Last night I made my way into a converted brick warehouse in Collingwood, as cold as it’s stark exterior appeared in the darkness, and talked for perhaps what amounted to twenty full seconds on my speaking role next weekend at the writer’s festival.
“So what does it mean to be called an emerging writer?” was the one question I believe I was asked, and I fumbled around for an answer. I blurted something about, well, I was already a published writer with articles in magazines…
“So you’re a journalist?”
[No, not by training, I should’ve interjected.]
…and then I went on to try to make an oblique point that now that I’ve got a book coming out and that people are (or will) start to attach “Author” to my credentials and that, yes, that is a little more ‘responsibility laden’ (WTF did that mean?!). What I should’ve said was that “Author” is such a culturally laden term and that I suppose I will need to come to some sort of definition of it in my own head so as not to become dazzled – or intimidated – when others start to throw it around.
None of this, really, I don’t think, had anything to do with the original question.
But they’re questions I’ve started to ask myself. Without any sort of resolution yet, because, frankly, I’ve been too sick to care. Which helped last night.
“Aren’t you nervous?” people asked me.
No, my ego was too dampened by the mucus and the headaches to have even bothered flaring up; unlike every other gland and membrane in my body this week. Small mercies, eh? So I turned up, glad to have survived the car trip without sneezing all over the windshield and causing a car crash due to the poor visibility out of said window and returned home in equally as grateful a mood.
In sum: interesting.
