by Kenneth Andrews

Created on: July 15, 2010

When you are writing, and the words are flowing well and you are drunk on the sheer pleasure of bringing something into the world that just didn't exist before, whether a novel, poem, screenplay or a 400 word article on how to get people to read all your other 400 word articles through spamming Twitter, the temptation is always there to start talking about what you are writing. Talking to friends, talking to publishers, talking to the whole wide Internet, talking to anyone in the street who just can't get away fast enough.

Is talking about your writing a good idea? Or can it be detrimental to your work? A few thoughts on this subject.

First and foremost, it is clear that any time that you spend talking about what you are writing, you are not actually writing it. It is brilliant that you are so enthused and excited about your writing, but, dear, you really need to spend quite a lot of time actually writing it all down, typing it all up, proofreading it and so on. You know, writer stuff.

Garrulous aspiring writers who talk at length about their works in process can get themselves a bit of a reputation, whether it's deserved or not, for being all mouth and no trousers. They will talk at such length about their work that they almost forget that they have not got around to writing it. If you talk to a professional writer about a work in progress they will often be very interested at first, but listen out for that little question 'How far have you got with it?'. It is a sign that you are in severe danger of boring them, and they are just checking to see whether you are still worth taking seriously. If your honest answer is: a prologue which you'll have to end up cutting because no one likes pretentious prologues any more, then this is probably your cue to change the subject and tell them how brilliant their own work is. Writers love that.

On a similar note, if you are brave enough to phone an agent (and PLEASE check their website to make sure they are cool with new authors phoning them, because a lot are not), the first question they will ask is: "What have you written?" Notice the past tense. No one in the industry is interested in what you are writing until at least one draft is finished and they can see for themselves how brilliant (or otherwise) it is.

So, having established that anyone in the know will quickly assume that you are just a wannabe blowing hot air whenever you talk about what you are writing, we must pass to another issue: copyright.

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