Don't bother me I'm writing

I got a phone call today about the project I described a couple of posts back -- just a follow up based on some information I requested from iUniverse.  Their consultant wanted more information about my story, and I think my tongue actually swelled up in my mouth and almost choked me to death.  It was bad enough blogging about it, but talking about it -- I've never.   "Well -- um -- it's sort of about a murder kind of. This pastor gets -- um -- murdered and the whole town freaks out, and -- um ..." It was awful. Really awful. Really, really, really awful. And I kept telling her how sorry I was for sounding like a crazy person. "I've never talked about this to anyone," I panted. "I mean not even my family or my friends, and it's just sort of hard to talk about it like this." She tried consoling me, but that's what everyone does with crazy people, because crazy people are scary. I spent most of the rest of this afternoon construct...

My friends and aunts and parents sometimes ask about this "book" I'm writing. I don't like calling it a book, because a book is something that is published, and I don't know that anyone with a printing press will ever be interested in my writing.  I'd rather refer to my project as a 50,000-plus-word story. Not that I've written 50,000 words -- that (50,000) is the goal, because a 49,999-word story is one word short of a novel. I cagily evade inquiries regarding the aforementioned project, refusing to share so little as a sentence with even my closest friends and family members. This thing is personal to me. It's part of me like my children are part of me. The idea of putting it out there turns my stomach inside out.  I can write and share a million diatribes against myself with little angst -- I prize my self-deprecating humor highest of all my attributes.  I'm not nearly so comfortable with my serious bits.  Please keep that...