Are You a Lonely Writer? 🐈

Do you ever get lonely? How can you tell?

Writers like being alone, undisturbed, so they can focus. They're protective of their solitude and rarely identify with being lonely, in part because their imaginations are wildly populated with intriguing thoughts, characters, and dramatic situations with the potential to become stories.

But when does creative solitude cross over into loneliness? 

It's not as clear or straight as the yellow line down the center of a road. We're often on the other side before we've realized we've been drifting. There's no honking or swerving of oncoming traffic to alert us to the danger we're in. We just... feel different. A bit out of sorts, maybe a bit sad or irritable, possibly extra self-conscious, worried, fearful, or even paranoid. These shifts in mood and self perception can creep up on us so quietly that we're often convinced they're byproducts of what's going on in the outer world rather than our inner worlds.

Psychologists identify loneliness as "painful isolation.” Feeling lonely is a subjective awareness of feeling some distress and dissatisfaction around interpersonal relationships. To be lonely is to have certain social needs unmet.

Every person has different social needs and, therefore, a personal loneliness threshold. We each have to figure out what that is. Personally, I love traveling on my own, and I once spent a summer in Brittany, mostly alone, sometimes working on a novel. One day I looked up from my computer and realized I felt odd. A bit loose at the seams. A bit down in the dumps. I wondered why until it occurred to me that I hadn't interacted with another soul in three days, not a phone call or a grocery purchase or a nod on the street. (Actually, I don’t think I’d even left the house.)

Writers do tend to tolerate greater amounts of alone-time than others, and we know that being alone is not the same as being lonely, but we may over value solitude and the creative possibilities we think it might bring at the expense of fulfilling fundamental needs for social connection. I wouldn’t have been aware of that three day threshold if I hadn’t felt it physically. (Honestly, I can go longer than a few days on my own, but zero contact with other humans, even to observe them across a restaurant from the privacy of your own dinner table, will take a toll eventually.)

Humans are wired to be together, though not all the time. To be human is to embody a living paradox--we need connection and belonging and we need autonomy and freedom. More importantly, we need to be aware of the experiences of these things. It's not always enough to be free; we want to feel free. It's not enough to know we're connected to family and friends; we need to feel these connections.

Which also means we can feel lonely even if we're not really alone in an objective sense. We all want to feel seen, understood, safe, welcome, and of some value within our social tribe. When we're deprived of such feelings, we can end up feeling lonely, depressed, or anxious.

In fact, loneliness is a predictor of depression and anxiety, yet it stands apart from it too; you can feel lonely without feeling depressed or anxious. But if your personality is prone to depression and anxiety, and that's true of many writers, you can end up drifting toward loneliness without being aware of it.

Apparently loneliness is on the rise in our digitally connected yet more physically isolated societies. The Covid pandemic forced us all to adapt to "social distancing,” and, thankfully, advances in technology were able to meet most us where we were in our locked down locations. But in the years since, most everyone is more digitally connected than ever, whether through live interactions on Zoom or other platforms, on social media, through watching YouTube or various streaming services, yet we're also more lonely. We may have plenty of visual and aural input, but how often are we in each other’s physical presence anymore? How many of our in-person encounters have been replaced with virtual ones?

Now, I’m not knocking the live online thing. I love the freedom and flexibility it allows me, but I do miss the quality of connection that comes from being in the presence of others (it’s one of the reasons I’m hosting an in-person writing retreat this year).

We certainly aren’t going to stuff the genie of technology back in the bottle. The digital and virtual are here to stay. But we can choose to include more social interaction in our lives, which means investing time and energy in the relationships that keep us on the right side of our personal loneliness threshold.

It’s been proven that good relationships keep us healthier and happier. You’ve probably heard of that long running Harvard study? This Ted Talk from 2015 summarizes it, with two of its points being: social connections are good for us and loneliness kills (they’re now equating its impact on longevity with smoking fifteen cigarettes a day!).

I’ve always been one of those writers in search of more solitude, so I made a decision early on in life to invest in friendships with people who love writing. Writers do need other people, especially for commiserating and celebrating the strange ups and downs of the writing life, and they always understand when their fellows need to pull away to create. I have other friends and family, too--as writers we must be willing to engage fully with real life if we want to have anything to write about!--but my writer peers are essential. As a matter of fact, maybe I'll reach out and set up a coffee date right now... 

"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life."

~Ernest Hemingway ~

"There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickering, apologies, heartburning, calling to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that."
~ Mark Twain ~