The fear of being seen: an author and his novel facing the microphone

Nobody warns you about this when you decide to publish a novel. They tell you about the writing process, the editing, the covers, the ISBN, the legal deposit, Amazon and its ridiculous margins. But nobody sits you down over a coffee and tells you what is really going to happen: that the day your book exists in the world, you will have to go out and explain it. Out loud. In front of people. And that this brings a fear that has nothing to do with writing.

Writing is an act that is both intimate and cowardly. You shut yourself away, you invent people who do not exist, you drag them into trouble that you control, and if something goes wrong you can delete it without anyone knowing. Promotion is exactly the opposite: it is you, with no safety net, explaining in real time why it is worth someone spending their money and their time on something that came out of your head. The public exposure of an author is, basically, the antithesis of everything that led him to write in the first place.

Impostor syndrome has its own IP address

Impostor syndrome in writers is not a metaphor or a complaint on some literary forum. It is a physical, concrete sensation that appears at the most uncomfortable moment possible: right when someone asks you to talk about your book naturally. Who are you to write a novel? This question, which you have spent months keeping quiet while you write, comes back with renewed force the instant you have a microphone in front of you.

In my case, the question came loaded with objectively ridiculous facts to justify the insecurity: twenty years of career, a first published novel, real readers who had paid to read Blackout Europa. And even so, when they confirmed that I was going to be on Onda Regional de Murcia to talk about PIZZA, TWITTER y 23 días en el INFIERNO, the first reaction was not joy. It was something close to stage fright, but in a domestic version and without a stage.

This is what nobody tells you: that impostor syndrome does not disappear when you publish. It mutates. Before, it told you that you were not capable of finishing the book. Then it tells you that nobody will want to read it. And when someone does want to read it, it evolves into its most perverse form and whispers that the moment you open your mouth everyone will realise you are a fraud.

Twenty-two minutes live with Lucía Hernández

The cultural section of Tarde Abierta on Onda Regional de Murcia is not a high-tension space or a trench-warfare debate. It is exactly the opposite: a warm, well-run format where the conversation flows with a naturalness that, paradoxically, makes it harder to prepare for. There is no possible trick in a chat that really works. Either you relax and speak like a human being, or it shows.

I prepared the way I am: an IT technician with a literary calling and a tendency to over-analyse. Mental outlines, possible questions, rehearsed answers that sounded exactly like what they were, rehearsed answers. And then, when Lucía got the conversation going, all of that vanished in about thirty seconds because the questions were different and because, deep down, what worked was not the preparation. It was talking about something I genuinely believe in.

What I took away from that experience was not the result, which was good, but the lesson that came afterwards: talking about your novel in the media is the only real rehearsal there is for talking about your novel in the media. There is no possible simulation. You have to go through it to know that you can.

Radio is the most honest medium for a writer

Radio has something that television does not have and that written interviews do not have either: real time with no possible editing. What you say, stays. There is no post-production touch-up, there is no turning back the page. That creates a specific kind of tension, different from the one produced by a press interview, where you can reread and qualify before it goes out.

But at the same time, radio has an enormous advantage: nobody is looking at you. The listener builds their image of the author from your voice, your rhythm, the confidence or the doubt you transmit without meaning to. And that, for someone who has spent years building narrative voices, is a territory that, however hard it is to admit in the moment, feels familiar. The voice is the writer's instrument even when he is not writing.

I discovered that talking about PIZZA, TWITTER y 23 días en el INFIERNO on air was easier than expected precisely because the novel has a premise that explains itself: a programmer with no useful skill whatsoever ends up stranded in the Namib desert because of a viral challenge on Twitter. The absurdity does the work. You do not have to convince anyone that the story is interesting; you just have to tell it and people start laughing before you finish the sentence.

What nobody tells you about fairs and public events

Radio is a format with structure. There is a host who carries the thread, there is a beginning and an end, there is a clear context. Literary fairs and book launches are something else. They are spaces where the author is exposed in a far more naked way, because there is nobody to ask you the questions: you have to speak first, hold the silence, capture the attention of people who were looking at something else before you arrived.

I have learned, with more attempts than I would like to admit, that the difference between an author who works at a public event and one who does not is not extroversion. It is the ability to talk about the book as if it were the first time you were telling it, every time. Genuine enthusiasm cannot be faked for long. If you believe in what you have written, that comes across. If you are thinking about how uncomfortable it is to be there, that comes across too.

The writer who has spent months alone in front of a screen building a world has to find a way to compress it into two minutes of standing conversation between two stands. It is a skill different from writing, not opposite, but different. And the only way to learn it is to expose yourself.

The reader on the other side: why the vertigo is worth it

There is a specific moment that changes the whole perspective on this. It is not when you sell the first copy or when you receive the first positive review. It is when someone who has read the book talks to you about it and uses details that you put there knowing that most readers would overlook them. When that happens, when you discover that the text truly reached someone and left something behind, the fear of public exposure is rescaled. It does not disappear; it becomes secondary.

Going out to talk about PIZZA, TWITTER y 23 días en el INFIERNO on Onda Regional, on social media, in bookshops, at any fair where they give me a slot, is not an obligation that comes with publishing. It is the way to close the circuit. The book exists on paper and in digital, but the story truly exists when someone else makes it their own. And for that to happen, the author has to step out of where he feels comfortable and speak.

The fear does not go away. You learn to leave the house with it.