"Oh, you still write?"

I was going to a dinner party about a month ago, and I printed one of my stories for the hostess. She was in the strange situation of living with her ex-boyfriend, so I thought that I had a story about dysfunctional relationships that might amuse her. Since the desert I was bringing was heavy (must have been all the apples I put in it) I put the story on top of the dish, and started out the door.

My mom stopped me, and asked what it was. A story, I told her. " Oh, you still write?" she asked. Of course I still write. In May I finished a novella I spent a year writing. I write all the time. The question struck me as odd, what on earth did she think I type all the time, letters to my congressman?

It wasn’t until she asked if she could read the story sometime and I hedged that I figured it out. She hasn’t read anything I’ve written in over a year. The why is complicated.

Part of it is when I was young, she’d print out my stories, without asking, and show them to people. Don’t get me wrong, I want people to read what I’ve written, the dozen or so people I’ve trusted to read more than a piece or two of my writing over the years could tell you how much I like getting feedback. I don’t even mind if someone that I’ve given a piece of writing to shares it with whomever they care to. This is different, since she’d take my writing. That’s an invasion of privacy, and not even asking shows disregard for me. I’m sure she wouldn’t do the same thing now that I’m an adult, when I was a teenager I purposely started misnaming extensions on files so they wouldn’t show up when she put the disk in the computer, but even though I don’t think she’d go onto my own computer and snoop the uneasiness that she might still lingers. I know she reads things on the screen as I type. . .

The other reason is worse. That last story she read? She handed it back and asked me if I’d ever slept with one of my closest friends, because of something the main character did. Of course not! Now, don’t get me wrong, my friend is a nice enough guy, but the very thought of sleeping with him has occurred to me few enough times to count on one hand with fingers left over. From things she’s said since, I know she doesn’t believe my denial, which I find frustrating. The problem with her having read that story isn’t that she made that particular assumption, but that she made any at all. I’m not writing autobiographies here, and it isn’t nice to think that someone will read a story and think that everything in it relates directly to things you think, feel or have done. My characters do things I’d never dream of, and that’s the beauty of writing. The thing I find funny is that there was a bit of my own life in that story, the feeling of not doing what people expected of you, but that’s not what she picked up on. Hopefully that I don’t feel the need to give her more reasons to jump to wrong conclusions about me is forgivable.

Maybe someday I’ll give her a story to read. But not today. And probably not tomorrow.