I’ve always hated talking about my writing. Pretty weird for someone who wants to make a living as a novelist-I know. But it’s not that I necessarily hate sharing my writing. I don’t mind people reading it. It’s easier when there’s an element of anonymity, of course; I didn’t have much problem submitting query letters or even sending out my manuscript because there was the reassurance that I didn’t know these people, and they didn’t know me, and even if they thought my writing stank, well, it’s not like they’d ever be able to humiliate me in person about it.

No, my problem is that I’m terrified of talking about my writing. I have a publishing contract, and in a couple of months, for better or worse, my precious manuscript will be out there for all the wide world to see. Necessarily I need to be able to talk about it-to generate buzz and, hopefully, to build up an audience so that when my novel comes out in May it’ll become an instant international sensation, hit the New York Times bestseller list, and land a movie deal with Ridley Scott attached to direct. Right?

Well, maybe not all of that. But at least I need to be able to speak publicly about my novel without become extremely embarrassed and immediately looking for ways to change the subject. Which is what tends to happen, because I hate talking in person about my writing. I hate it when people say, blithely, “So…heard you wrote a novel. What’s it about?” Such an innocent, guileless question. But I hate it.

Some of it is probably just selfishness on my part. It’s been my manuscript for so long-my story, my characters-and now I have to let it go out into the world. I have to detach myself from it and talk about it objectively as a Novel-not as the ever-unfolding, almost organic thing that’s lived in the privacy of my own head for years. I’ve got to cut it down to a series of simple descriptors and formulae so I can answer that dreaded, dreadful question in a way that hopefully doesn’t misrepresent my creation too much. That’s hard to do, for one thing because my story isn’t really “high concept”-i.e., not describable in one succinct, juicy line-and for another because it has a life of its own in my head which refuses to be reduced to simple terms.

I don’t think that’s enough of an explanation, though. “Not wanting to misrepresent my work” doesn’t explain why I get almost physically ill when I have to talk about it. Does anyone else suffer from this kind of block? How do you overcome it? How do you get to the point of being comfortable talking about your writing?