Feeling Lonely, Writer? — Embrace It.
Embrace the solitude of the writer’s life, for it is in the quiet moments that inspiration whispers its secrets.
Upcoming episode on Becoming A Writer podcast this Saturday — we are going to talk about why comparison is the thief of your writing joy.
Embrace the solitude of the writer’s life, for it is in the quiet moments that inspiration whispers its secrets.
— Anne Rice
This past weekend, I turned ten years old as a writer. And I can say with certainty that writing is a lonely job.
This is something a writer has to accept. Even better, embrace it.
As a writer, you will often feel-
- mentally lonely, where you are with your thoughts.
- physically lonely, where you are hunched over your notebook or keyboard, busy breathing life into your imagination and thoughts.
- emotionally lonely, where you are the only one who cares about you and your words.
- spiritually lonely, where you feel like you are the only one who gets you and your words.
Now, after living the life of a writer for a decade, I understand the loneliness and depression Kafka, Woolf, Hemingway, Coleridge and Van Gogh felt. I now understand why many past creatives resorted to alcohol and drugs. My equivalent vice is numbing myself doom-scrolling Instagram for a few seconds of respite and running to the bookstore every time life becomes too heavy to bear.
It is difficult to find connections and understanding in a world that’s often overwhelming and lost in the Matrix.
And yet, we writers must learn to embrace loneliness because it is a prerequisite for living a creative life.
Why Writers Need To Be On Their Own?
There is a scene in the show Agatha Christie’s Poirot, season 1, episode 1, where detective Hercule Poirot and his friend Captain Hastings visit the countryside looking for someone. While Hastings is enjoying nature and sheep, Poirot is not. What followed is an exchange which, I believe, is valid for all artists.
Captain Hastings: Look at that, Poirot. Look at that view.
Hercule Poirot: Yes, well, views are very nice, Hastings, but they should be painted for us so that we may study them in the warmth and comfort of our own homes. That is why we pay the artist, for exposing himself to these conditions on our behalf.
“…exposing himself to these conditions on our behalf.”
As writers, no matter what kind or genre, we are essentially looking at life, realising that there is something there that’s worth sharing with others, and then putting ourselves to the arduous task of trying to replicate in words what we feel and see. We see something, and then we hold out a mirror for others to see it as well.
This looking at life and trying to give it shape in words cannot happen in the busyness of life. We need to step away and go into our self-imposed house arrest to gather our thoughts and knowledge, to listen to our inner voice and then put it on paper. This self-imposed confinement may last only a couple of hours each morning before the rest of the world wakes up or could be a phase in your life lasting weeks, months or even longer. To write something worth reading, you have to give it space to be written freely without any outside intrusion and at its own pace.
Does that mean that we writers are doomed to be on our own for life? Absolutely not! We are writers only because we are humans first. It is the experience of living a human life that gives us the spark to live a writer’s life. They feed each other. But if you continue to stuff yourself with experiences, you will have no space to digest and recreate them in your writing. We need a healthy balance of indulging in the world and, at the same time, embracing the quiet moments of being alone in a room with our notebooks.
Also, we need to understand the difference between the cousins of “being on your own” — alone, lonely and solitude.
Alone is being on your own with your thoughts and activities.
Lonely is doing to same and feeling sad that you don’t have anyone to share it with.
Solitude is being alone intentionally for a purpose that’s larger than you, knowing that this is a necessary part of life, therefore being calm and at peace while trusting the process.
Solitude is what we should be aiming for when being on our own with our writing.
Why Being A Writer In This World A Lonely Endeavour?
Most of us, writers and non-writers, are born in families that are not creatively inclined or accepting. The general norm of all humans is to get educated enough to work in a job or business. This is the usual route and the usual way we are expected to live.
When an artist is born into such a family (and born doesn’t only mean baby-born, it could be a realisation you have later), both the artist and the people around them don’t know how to act and what to do about it. Living our writer life will seem reckless to our non-writer friends, which will make them make sure they let us know that what we are doing is wrong. On the other hand, after spending most of our lives as just a human, when we writers start to embrace the writer’s lifestyle, it feels odd. The recklessness and oddness are a result of not seeing enough artistic life around us to realise that it is one of the ways of living life and is totally okay.
Just because we live differently or have different requirements than most doesn’t mean we are doing something wrong.
Living as a creative in a world that is programmed to conform and expects you to labour without questioning anything is hard. Creatives don’t enjoy conformity, are always curious and asking questions, and are okay with labour as long as there is some purpose to it that’s in alignment with them. We are going in the opposite direction of the rest of the population. No wonder there is so much friction and misunderstanding.
Creative life is close to living like a child — in awe and wonder and fun — something that’s hard to do as an adult and is hard for other adults to accept that you can live like that. Therefore, all the isolation, rejection, lack of understanding, financial struggles, fears of all sorts, unsupportive environment, lack of resources or help and pressure to prove yourself. So much of your effort and energy goes into sticking to your guns and not giving up on your writing dreams.
Hence, a creative life like that of a writer is a lonely one.
How To Embrace The Loneliness?
I am not going to share the advice about joining a writing community or group, having an accountability partner, or using social media to combat loneliness.
While they are great aids on our writing journey, they are like modern medicine — they suppress the symptoms instead of going deep and solving the problem at the root once and for all. They are extrinsic solutions for an intrinsic problem that relieve you for a short while, leaving you feeling emptier in the long run. They won’t work and help boost your writing life if you haven’t accepted being on your own as part of your life.
So what will help? The following are what is helping me embrace loneliness -
Flip the script. Stop calling it loneliness, even if it feels like that. Start thinking of this phase as solitude, as a space in time where you build your character as a human and writer. Remember there is a difference between being alone, lonely and in solitude. Choose the last one.
Remember, it’s part of the job. Just like it’s part of the job of a teacher to keep time aside to grade papers, it’s part of your writing job to spend time alone. It’s not a curse or inconvenience; it’s a job requirement. You need alone time and space to gather your thoughts, research, plan, write, and revise. You need empty spaces where, to others, it looks as if you are daydreaming, but you are actually letting your conscious brain rest and your subconscious brain connect the dots.
You are not alone — even though many, many times it will feel like that. Always remember there were creatives who came before you and went through the same. They know what you are going through. They, in spirit, are with you. We usually like to think that others have it better than us. Yes, in some aspects of life, they may have been blessed, but remember that in some other aspects, you are blessed too. The writers who came before also had it challenging. And if they made it as writers, so can you.
Catch up with your favourite books, movies and characters. They are your favourites for a reason. Something in them ignited a spark in you — it could be of resonance, of love, of sharing the same characteristics. In a way, you see yourself in them. Let them tell you that you are not alone in this journey. Watch your favourite movies, read your favourite books, indulge in fan-fiction and fan-edits around your favourite characters. They keep your heart happier and hopeful. And when you feel happy and hopeful, you feel the drive to replicate it in your writing.
Aim to be in a flow state. As much as you can, when you are writing, try to go in a flow state. Being in the flow state essentially means that you get so lost in the activity you are doing that you lose track of time, and when you come out of this trance-like state, you feel energised. You want to achieve this high state as often as you can as this provides you with so much satisfaction from the act of writing itself that no reward or accolade could give you.
And, remember, you have the best cheerleader in the world you’ll ever need — YOU. There is no one more invested in seeing you succeed than you. There is a part of you that knows you can be the writer of your dreams, that you can achieve the writing success you are aiming for. Trust that inner you. All this being on your own will not, will never, go to waste. This is the time when you are being your own apprentice and who will soon become a master. And through it all, you’ll always have you.
