Wow. I was working on a post earlier today that sounded so self-defeating that I had to stop because I was making myself cranky in the process. A cranky Laura is no fun to be around. I knew I had to put a stop to that before it escalated into something so ugly I wouldn’t dare look at it.

I wanted to compare myself to the last remaining Dodo bird and the fact that Wikipedia told me that “few took particular notice of the bird immediately after its extinction.” A sobering thought and yet for awhile I considered just how much truth there was in that statement.

I mean, how totally self-absorbed does that sound to you?

Tsk! Tsk! I say.

So what if I spend a good deal of my time alone if I’m doing what I truly love? So what if I’m told you should have come along when nobody bothered to tell me they were going? I probably wouldn’t have even noticed what I missed out on, it being after the fact and all. So what if others assume that writers demand constant solitude and the shoulder of another writer to cry on when things are rough? I’m tough. I can take it!

I sometimes think people are frightened of writers, that to some we are scary beyond belief. What’s really going on in our minds? What weird, far out there, thoughts are we thinking? What mental notes are we taking?

But guess what? Before I was a writer I was like every other non-writer out there. That’s if I was to separate the world in that way, which I wouldn’t.

I get that many people find what I do hard to relate to. Many non-writers love the fact that writers have written when there is something solid and tangible for them to hold in their hands, the process of which doesn’t interest them in the least, and maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe that is asking too much, and writers should simply understand that and call it good.

And yet we are not just writers are we? Non-writers tell me about their interests, their desires, their plans and I don’t think I have ever once told them that I couldn’t relate to it.

Why?

Because I relate to feeling their joy, and hearing what’s new in their lives. I love seeing what they are creating even though it has nothing to do with written words. I take pleasure in seeing their faces light up when they have something beautiful to share even if it is not completely finished.

I find it difficult sometimes to keep my writing life and my non-writing life separate especially when I’m excited about some new WIP I’m working at and the person I happen to be talking to is not a writer. Yet I’ve learned over time that most non-writers view the process of writing as if it were a foreign language. And so I try and respect their wishes and keep what I’m working on to myself even if that sometimes leaves me feeling, for a brief time, like the last remaining Dodo.

Have you ever felt like the last remaining Dodo?