Ernest Hemingway said it well; “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.” Writing is a lonely job, one that requires concentration, attention to detail, and the ability to immerse ourselves in our work while shutting out distractions that threaten creativity and the flow of thoughts.
Fiction writers need a certain amount of privacy in order to birth characters who are complex and memorable with quirks and foibles intrinsic to our diverse human race. Writers explore new worlds, travel to faraway lands, and fashion new realms where good and evil fight for domination. This is best accomplished in times of solitude.
As we write, we watch our characters grow and develop into living, breathing beings. We weep with them through their struggles and rejoice with their success. Our characters become a part of our thoughts, our passions, our very lives. We care about them so deeply that we are often reluctant to put them in harm’s way even when it strengthens the plot.
One of the hazards of being a writer is the potential for devoting more time to our own mental creations than to actual people. Thus our isolation is largely of our own making. We run the risk of losing that vital connection with our readers on a personal level; the very audience to whom we write becomes just that – an audience rather than flesh and blood readers.
We work alone. We create on our own. Which can lead to a certain feeling of loneliness and disappointment, especially when our work appears to go unappreciated, when months or even years of hard labor don’t receive the recognition we feel they deserve. We bury those characters we’ve come to love as they pass into oblivion, characters stuck between the pages of discarded manuscripts.
Though a writer’s mind never really stops creating, and we never know quite when a creative spark will strike, it behooves us to balance our days between ‘work’ and social interaction. We need that contact with people who are not the fabrication of our own minds but flesh and blood. Individuals whose words are not manipulated by our keyboards but speak freely to our own humanness.
I am blessed with a very supportive spouse who reads my works, offers creative comments, and applauds my hard work. He urges me not to quit, even when I doubt myself, and reminds me not to measure myself against other writers but to continually hone my craft and compare myself against the writer I used to be.
Writing is a lonely job. That’s why it’s crucial to reconnect on a regular basis with our readers and those around us. Whether it be through writers’ groups, book signings, reading engagements in schools and libraries or special events at bookstores, we must find ways to link up with family, friends, our community, and those beloved booklovers. We must not be so consumed with ‘doing’ that we neglect ‘being’; being a friend, being a parent, being a person who lives life to the fullest and contributes in practical ways to the world in which we live.
© Renée Vajko Srch. March 7, 2021