First of all, I have to make a confession: given half the chance, I tend to eavesdrop.
I put this down to my fascination with conversations and my hobby of people-watching. I don't eavesdrop in a mean-spirited or gossipy way; I don't take any information I may have gleaned and spread it around the town. I listen for accents and dialect, clever uses of language, and the politics of interaction. I try to guess at hidden subtexts and past histories, the interrelationships, the degree of affection or respect among interlocutors. And once in a while, when I am out with friends myself, I spot others that I'm certain are eavesdroppers at work. Needless to say, I do not begrudge them; I only hope they're as entertained and enlightened by the conversations I'm involved in as I've been by the ones I've stealthily monitored. As long as they obey the Eavesdroppers' Code of Honor like I do (in essence, 'Do it discretely and courteously and never even dream of joining in unless invited'), as far as I'm concerned they are more than welcome to indulge in their hobby.
Not long ago, I overheard a woman in a coffee shop compare getting a book published to the agony of labor. I too have written a book I am hoping to publish and like other would-be published writers I have learned that waiting is very much part of the deal. Up until I heard the labor comparison I'd been mentally smiling and nodding to almost everything I heard this woman say. But comparing the pains of labor to the pains of getting published? Oh no. Nooooo.
"You forget the pain," a friend of mine once commented, by way of explaining why she'd had four babies. Do you? I sure as hell never did, and I can't even remember where I put my coat. Yes, I know the woman was just speaking figuratively, but I still won't allow it: the pain of childbirth is on a rarefied plane of its own and it cannot be referred to so lightly. The walls have ears, after all, and who knows what impressionable young women may be out there listening?
For any women out there who have published, but have yet to reproduce, please believe me: going through labor hurts more than the process of getting something published. I would not want you to go into childbirth imagining a lot of frenzied, late night head-scratching, long, tedious conversations, and ages and ages of waiting. There will be waiting, there may well be lots of frenzied late night stuff, but that's pretty much where the similarity between producing a baby and producing a book stops, though I can easily imagine that the sense of pride and achievement is a pretty close match.
But the comparison that really works is going through pregnancy and writing a book. There are real similarities here -- or at least I have found that to be the case. Consider the following:
1) You start off starry-eyed, not really knowing what you're getting into. It can't be all that hard since so many other people have done it you tell yourself smugly.
2) You can easily become cloistered, and hence slovenly in your personal grooming.
3) You are in danger of becoming a bore; of answering every kindly meant And how are you doing today? with a tiresomely detailed response, forgetting that the world around you is not desirous of a blow-by-blow description of every tiny new development.
4) Housework becomes all too easy to neglect.
5) You are dependent on the expertise of others to help you achieve your goal. Only those with uncommon fortitude can go through this entirely on their own.
6) You start losing sleep at night wondering if everything will turn out okay.
7) You know that there are no guarantees that everything will turn out okay, but what can you do?
8) The further along you go, the more impossible it is to contemplate termination.
9) You wonder why you went down this road in the first place. To leave something of yourself behind? To show the world what you can do? Because in a weak moment you gave in? Because your friends and family kept telling you it was a great thing to do?
Sitting there in the coffee shop, I thought all these things and more, but of course I kept it all to myself. It's not always easy, but the Eavesdroppers' Code of Honor must always be rigorously observed.
