Weekend Quickie: Don't Answer It
2009 June 26
What if you let yourself not answer the question?
Sometimes I don’t want to answer the question.
Simple ones, like: “What’s new?”
Or the deeper button-pushing ones I’ve had over the years:
“Are you still unemployed?”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“How are your finances?”
And then it finally hit me. I don’t have to answer every question I get asked.
Imagine responding to someone’s uninviting question with a big warm smile and saying, “I don’t feel like answering that right now. May I have another?”
I had lunch with a writer last week who told me that she can’t talk about her work in progress because it jinxes it. I think it is true for me too that some questions are private, and others do not know it until we tell them how we feel.
I’ve never loved the quesion “what is your novel/short stories about?”
But I have still asked it on occasion.
I guess we can always ask the writer how they’d like to talk about their work in progress.
I love this, T! Perfect advice.