Introvert Meets Book Events:

The process of launching a novel, part 2

“Introversion—along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness—is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living in the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are.”

– Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

The past five days I traveled to Chicago for a wedding reception, a book event at the American Writers Museum, book events at my old and new law firms, a work presentation, and a summer firm dinner. It’s the second time that my husband David and I have left our daughter at home for a book trip in the past month, and the last one was particularly stressful for her alloparents. All of this meant my introvert alert system going into this trip was at an all-time high.

I’m writing this on the other side, flying home. The plane sounds louder than ever; really, I’m half convinced that something is wrong with the engine. I look at David beside me: unfazed, typing away on his laptop for work.

Then I remember, again. I’m the introvert to David’s extreme extrovert. I pull out the old-school headphones I’ve been wearing this trip after forgetting my better ones in our daughter’s stroller. I miss noise cancellation deeply. It is my busy-airport, crowded-street antidote.

Now I’m in the Uber home. The driver wants to chat—and not just the polite few sentences that are all I can muster at the moment. David takes one for our team and pauses his work to engage with the driver; I turn up the volume on my inferior headphones and chastise myself for not being friendlier. I catch my eyes in the rearview mirror. My undereye concealer is hiding nothing today.

One thing I know: my old self would have had a harder time being present to myself and my feelings during a trip. And I think it helped me engage with the audience. Surprising myself, I genuinely enjoyed parts of each event. Every time I took a deep slow breath and stepped up behind a microphone, the fear of being suddenly rendered speechless faded a few words in. It helped that I shared my nerves before each event with those asking me questions. I also shared with each audience that one of the themes of the book is the public and private self, and the choice we have each moment about how much of our real selves to share. I told them I was facing that choice right then, standing in front of them. And I shared honest and non-glamorous things about the book and myself that I couldn’t have imagined myself saying in public a year ago. I shed the voice in my head that said I was “too serious.” That I should adopt a persona to make them laugh. I embraced my serious and brought introvert’s cousin along for the ride.

The key to enjoying any of this for me? Recovery time. Here’s the thing I did that still feels like a dirty confession: I booked a hotel in our old neighborhood instead of accepting offers from family and friends to stay with them. This meant going for runs in the morning along our familiar end of the lakeshore path; playing music through my Bluetooth speakers without worries about whether others were sick of hearing Lavender Haze yet again; precious hours alone without any talk whatsoever.

“Don’t think of introversion as something that needs to be cured,” Susan Cain writes. “Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you’re supposed to.” I’m trying hard to stop apologizing for spending money I’ve earned to give my inner introvert what she needs.   

My introversion went hand-in-hand with the book I wrote, with the words on this page. I am working to stop treating it as a second-class trait.