I recently learned a startling piece of information: Apparently, when literary agents like your work, they call you. As a confirmed shy person, I thought, “You mean I will have to talk to her?”
It was, I admit, a strange thought to have. What was I expecting, that we would correspond via owl?
On the other hand, it just seemed wrong. One of the best things about being a writer was hiding behind a curtain of words, controlling little buttons like the Wizard of Oz as you appear as an augmented disembodied mind on a blown-up screen. But talk to an agent? I was a writer, not some flashy performance artist.
But the modern role of a writer goes far beyond conversations with prospective agents. If you are lucky, it means giving interviews on radio or television; if you are offered these opportunities, they are considered good things.
Being a successful writer now ideally means being a type “A” go-getter, a charismatic self-promoter who manages to meld the aplomb of a third world dictator along with the humble charm of a Tibetan monk. The problem is, I am now having to go back to my childhood and look at a conflict I thought I had resolved long ago.
As a child I was constantly getting the message that “shy” was the worst thing you could be. No a bully, not a liar, not a cold-hearted manipulator or a charlatan faith-healer. They all paled next to being shy.
I spent most of my childhood trying to delete the undesirable trait from my character. But forcing myself to talk ultimately made me feel fake and made my social problems worse.
When anyone accused me of being shy, I hotly denied it. But what I was really rejecting was the stigmaI had been taught clung to it.
I could hear it in the sighing note of regret adults used when they said the word. Bullies gave me “shy” as their excuse for being mean. My dad, a psychology professor, owned rows of books on how to not be shy.
By adolescence, I’d had enough. I decided I was going to stay shy whether anyone approved of it or not. In fact, I was going to be so shy, I would redefine shyness; I was going to be all-out, militantly, in-your-face shy.
I would stop apologizing for it to people who were unable to let a moment pass without stuffing the air with their most inconsequential thoughts, who would never know the bliss of quiet introspection. I jettisoned the whole idea that shyness was on par with leprosy and decided to embrace it; I began to view shyness as a lonely misunderstood puppy with sad eyes that needed a home.
Surrendering the self-conscious struggle left me free to pursue interests that made me happy. I mourned my childhood, which I could have spent doing things I loved or learning fascinating things about the world; instead I had cluttered it with the futile, and even harmful, attempt not to be something that I was.
For many years, the situation has been happily resolved. But recently I have discovered that writing, which used to welcome shy bookish types, now seems to require for success the same trait as many other businesses: a larger-than-life, go-getting extroverted charismatic party personality.
Recently my husband, who used to have his own marketing firm, told me that if I wanted to succeed at writing, I would have to give up being shy.
“The hell,” I said.
“I mean it,” he said. “All the successful modern writers — in fact anyone who is successful at anything — tend to be brilliant self-promoters. Look around. There are no shy, successful writers.”
“Watch me.” I was not about to sit back and let my puppy be maligned. “I’ll be the first.”
In fact, I was not quite as confident about this as I sounded. I had noticed some things about Shyness the Puppy over the years. Mainly, that he could be exceedingly needy and inconvenient.
“Guess what, Shyness?” “There is an interesting person I want to meet. She knows a lot about writing and there is a lot I would like to discuss with her, like foreshadowing and commas. But to talk to her, I have to leave you here for a short time. What do you think?”
“No, puppy, no! Stop that! Your forehead, it\’s bleeding!”
Or “Guess what, Shyness? I’m going to a writer’s convention. There is the potential to meet editors and agents there. I can tell them about my book and do a thing called ‘networking.’” (You’re wrong, puppy. You’re wrong.)
But shyness aside, I have to ask how many of my social hang-ups are congenital, and how many are irrational fear. I am confident in many ways, but I do have childhood emotional baggage that can be limiting.
The bullying, though it lasted only for a short period relative to my whole life, left a lasting mark on my social confidence, which I dealt with by detaching myself and focusing only on the things, like grades, that I could control.
While I am perfectly fine with being shy, I am not okay with letting fear rule me, particularly when it interferes with my goals.
In high school and college, I dealt with a similar clash of goals and fear. Wanting to maintain my straight A average, I had to master the public speaking assignments.
I wrote my speeches and rehearsed them in front of my dad, over and over. Then, on the day of the speech, I ordered Shyness the Puppy to stay under my desk and be quiet.
And instead of barking at me, this time he listened, as I made my way to the front of the room, delivered my speech, and earned I my A. Gnaw on a sock, Fido.
That means that if the issue is fear, I can deal with it if I have a strong enough reason.
The popular remedy given for irrational fear is called “immersion therapy.” It consists of imagining the most awful thing you can possibly imagine yourself doing, and then doing it over and over again, until the fear goes away.
Commonly used to treat phobias, such as fear of germs, flying, or the number 13, it always seemed to me like the emotional equivalent of pressing your hand on a hot burner and seeing how long you could hold it there. I wondered how long it would be before I started to need therapy for my therapy.
But maybe, at this point, it is worth trying. But first I have to ask: What am I afraid of, and what are the worst things I imagine happening if I approach an editor and tell her about my novel? That in the middle of my elevator speech or a conversation my mind will go blank, leaving me to squirm under expectant, bifocal-enlarged fish eyes? That the editor will not receive me warmly but will instead greet me with an impatient eye roll? That I will accidentally say something that has a terribly offensive sexual double meaning, unknown to me, and that the entire event will be captured on camera and broadcast on to the world?
Or is it a dropped smile?
A dropped smile sometimes happens when you see someone clearly in a wonderful mood, like a cashier; the smiling afterglow of a recent friendly conversation still radiates on her face. You lay your bag of cat treats on the counter and she looks at you. She is still smiling dreamily, so you smile back.
Abruptly, face freezes into a corpse-like mask, the smile all gone. It is awkward; you are unsure what to do with the smile you have just given her. You have the insane impulse to apologize for trying to accept a smile not originally intended for you.
Should you abruptly drop your smile, too, as a way of saying, “Oh, I didn\’t intend to smile at you either. I have made a terrible, terrible mistake”?
Few things an editor could do would be worse than a dropped smile.
But the main issue here is not dropped smiles but irrational fear, and so I am giving immersion therapy serious consideration.
So, in accordance with its principles, I am making a checklist. I need to go ahead and recklessly do everything I am afraid to do: go bumbling through awkward conversations with strangers, seek out public speaking opportunities and go gloriously blank during all of them, and make a slew of ambiguously offensive sexual comment to editors.
And I have to do this a lot.
Then, flushed and exhausted, with nothing else to fear and nothing left to lose, I can finally clear away the last of my emotional flotsam, creating a clear path of sanity through the waters of my social angst, and sail smoothly toward my goal.