The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Writer

Or, all this solitude is driving me nuts!

Writing can be so damn lonely. And for many it was made lonelier still during the darkest days of the pandemic.

Just you and your laptop or desktop or journal. Hour after hour. Day after day. No wonder so many writers I know have pets.

And yet a surprising number of us are social animals. Why would someone who craves being with other people devote themselves to an art form that demands so much seclusion?

It might seem paradoxical, but I think there’s a good explanation.

Using myself as representative of writers, generally, I’d say most people who know me probably see me as an extrovert because I like to talk a lot and laugh a lot and, when I teach or give talks, perform to an audience. But I'm not a full-on extrovert. While I love going out with friends, having a drink or two, and being silly or serious, I also need my alone time, my quiet time. Time to retreat from the world. Time to decompress.

A few years ago, when I described the two sides of my personality to my friend Allan, he said I’m what’s called a "gregarious introvert.” It struck me as spot on, and I think it describes a lot of writers. 

Maybe it's why so many of us write for three or four hours at a clip, and we’re done. Introvert time is over and gregarious time has begun. Notice how wherever people congregate, you’ll find a slightly dazed and disheveled writer who’s been engaging with only a screen for the past few hours and now needs to engage with humans, preferably in person. But we won’t stay out for too long or our inner introvert will silently scream.

Some writers are really comfortable with the duality of socialization/isolation. My beloved mother-in-law, Betty, who passed away in 2019 and who I still want to call when something good or bad or funny happens, was an author who understood the benefit of living a double life. She was a dedicated and successful author, publishing nine books, including a memoir of her time in the 1950s working at Revlon (very Mad Men). Remarkably, she was still revising a novel manuscript and seeking a new agent when she died at the age of 92! Much as I fell in love with my future husband Matt when I met him, finding out his mother was an author sealed the deal.

Betty was a wonderful raconteur, sharing stories of her “wanton” youth. She was married and divorced twice before the marriage that stuck, to the man who would become Matt’s father. (This marriage took place after Betty’s father told her, “Three strikes and you’re out”). But lively as she was, she also spent a lot of time in her head coming up with character quirks and plot twists. I discovered this the time I took her for an MRI. Thinking I’d try to converse with her to ease her nerves while she was in the claustrophobic tube, Betty said to me, “Don’t feel like you have to talk to me. In fact, please don’t talk to me. I’ll be thinking about my novel.” Now, there’s a writer who knew how to make solitude work for her.

But a lot of us struggle with it.

Joyce Maynard addressed this in a July 14, 2021 post the day after her latest novel, Count the Ways, came out during a phase in the pandemic when in-person book events were first starting up again: “Here's the thing about living as a writer. It's lonely. When I'm working on a book—which is most of the time—I spend much of the day at my desk. Alone.

So when a moment comes in my life—as it does every year or two, or three—when I publish a new book, and I get to go out into the world and meet readers and talk—about my books, but also so much more—it's a particularly precious thing for me. Despite the solitary nature of my occupation, I'm an extrovert. I could spend hours at a bookstore, after a reading, talking with the women and men who show up to hear me. At some point, though, they've got to lock up the store.”

Even a New York Times bestselling author cannot be saved from the inherent loneliness of writing.

I imagine some of you are thinking that maybe you shouldn’t be a writer, after all, if you’re a social person or you should never get antsy when you’re writing, even when the solitude feels oppressive, or you should exert greater discipline and focus at the keyboard rather than giving in to your social side. As I’m sure you realize, all this “shoulding” accomplishes nothing.

Instead, what if you viewed this dual life as ideal for a writer? You get to experience the world and write about it. What could be better?!

The trick is to learn to regard solitude as a safe haven for creativity rather than eye it as a dark, dank, lonely place. And to build in opportunities for socialization rather than treating it as the enemy of productivity.

In A Moveable Feast, one of my favorite books, about Ernest Hemingway’s early days as a novelist in Paris in the 1920s, he describes how he’d devote his mornings to writing and then stop when he knew where the story was headed next. He writes, “That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it.” In other words, he was living his life, knowing his experiences would find their way into his books.

There are many ways for writers to offset their solitude (and, by the way, some of them provide a much more reliable income than writing, alone). Here are a few: teaching, writing before or after your regular work hours (I realize that’s a challenge), writing in coffeeshops with the background buzz of conversation and the espresso machines to keep you company, setting up times to write in person or over Zoom with a friend, sharing your pages with others, collaborating with co-writers and editors, giving book talks, attending or running workshops or retreats (or running with the bulls), joining this awesome community of writers by subscribing to this newsletter (!), and doing all the social activities you love and feel safe doing during the pandemic—as long as you’re reaching your writing goals for the day.

Keeping your readers or potential readers in mind as you write can also make you feel connected and alleviate some loneliness. In fact, I’m doing this right now. And, finding a champion of your writing can make a difference, too—someone or mulitple people who will be your cheerleader(s); after all, there’s plenty of opportunity for receiving more critical assessments from others.

As Stephen King says in On Writing, “Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.”

Let me know in the comments if you sometimes find writing lonely. What works best for you?

I think old-timey typewriters made better writing companions than laptops, don’t you?