The Lie of the Loneliness of the Writer's Life

***note:  this is my first attempt at writing and publishing a blog post through ScribeFire, a blogging tool add-on with my firefox browser. Let's see how it goes. If any of you use ScribeFire let me know what you think about it.


I have begun reading a book by Julia Cameron, famous for her classic book on creativity, The Artist's Way.
This newer book by her is titled, The Right to Write.

Last night I skipped ahead and read part of the chapter about loneliness and the writing life. Her insights were startling as well as inspiring.

So much has been written about the loneliness of the writer's lot that it feels like heresy to report the truth as I know it: in my experience, not writing is a lonely business. The minute I let myself write, everything else falls into balance. If  I get a dose of writing in my day, then I can actually socialize with a clear conscience. I can actually be present for the life I am having rather than living in the never-never land of the nonwriting writer, that twilight place where you always "should" be somewhere else - writing - so that you can never enjoy where you actually are.

I am so busted.

I hide in my writing cave. I hover about words and websites, emails and instant messaging, busy writing yet not writing anything. I keep busy, but unproductive. I flit about like a trapped bat who can't find their way out of the attic. And this, I suspect, thanks to Ms. Cameron, is what creates the river of loneliness that runs through my life. I am not lonely because I am a writer. I am lonely when I'm not.

Cameron further observes:

Not writing is the lonely thing. Not writing creates self-obsession. Self-obsession blocks connection with the self. Writing is like looking at an inner compass. We check and get our bearings. Ah-ha! I am feeling, thinking, remembering....When we know accurately what it is that we are doing, we tend to be more open, accurate, and affectionate in our dealings....For this reason, I would argue that the writing life is a proof against loneliness. It is a balm for loneliness. It is an act of connection first to ourselves and then to others.

This truth, her truth, is also my truth. I can see that now. To write is to soar above and beyond the safe place of my lonely cave. It is to come out into the light, the warm sun blueing the sky of my dreariness. The words are the tracks that lead me outward. My railway of freedom is a paragraph away.

I cannot moan about the loneliness of my writer life anymore. Cameron has diagnosed me and with that diagnoses comes responsibility to take care of myself. If gray clouds are swirling around me, then combat them I will with the sharp edge of my pen.

Writing, after all, is therapy.