The Lonely Life of a Writer

The Lonely Hemmingway

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day. 
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Ernest Hemingway

As much as I love Hemingways work, lets face it, he was a miserable old sod and for the most of it, for good reasons. Death and the concept of nothingness permeates his work; though if you look a little deeper, his continual search for authenticity and the courage to live ones life embracing this, is a message which perhaps aught to be taking away; rather than obsessing on his drinking, politics and continual accidents and injuries.

Earlier this week Pauls post –  The mythic life of the writer prompted us to think about the stereotypes artists, and in particular writers have within our society and how these are both maintained and upheld. One of the myths he touches on was the lonely and unappreciated life of the artist. Perhaps for the wrong reasons, Hemmingway heads the movement for the “lonely writer.”

Some writers are fortunate enough to  have a group of writers they are able to interact with either face to face or online in order to share the pain of rejection letters, of being frustrated, carving their way out of writers block, kicking ones way out of procrastination and in sharing the intensity of the writing process. Even within these groups, members lament of the loneliness of the writing process and of the disengagement they have from “real life.”

Like Father McKenzie in the Beatles song ‘Eleanor Rigby’, many writers believe that  they are creating text which no one is going to read. This, I believe,  forms the spearhead of the loneliness belief.  It is the fear of obscurity which then leads to a fear of mortality. The published, popular works of writers live on through a myriad of media, some yet to be invented. The forgotten scribblings of the majority of writers will turn to ash in the time that their mortal bodies do.

Perhaps too a distinction needs to be made between ‘alone’ and ‘lonely’ and of the concept of solitude.

Many writers maintain that work cannot be done in the midst of cafes or the general hub bub of life and that ‘real creativity’ comes from solitude. Creativity, be it writing, sculpting, acting or drawing comes from the inner most part of the soul. Whilst it is true that many people find it difficult to tap into this part of themselves with the distractions of suburbia occurring about them, for others, a practiced meditative state will ensure that this resource is tapped into and allowed to flow freely.

When it comes down to it, we write, birth and die alone, regardless of who is in the room with us.  Whilst we can share our stories with others, co-write or be part of a collective, its our worlds, characters and events which our minds have turned into our literary efforts. The words we put forth, regardless of the amount of drafts and edits it has been through, will belong to only one person. Perhaps it is true that writing is a solitary craft. However, solitude is a state of mind, rather than an environmental state and one that writers especially should be expert in realizing, yet are some of the last to embrace.

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Annie Evett One of my favourite jokes involves one of Hemingways chickens crossing the road… Why? To die…. alone.. in the rain…. Seriously… Am I the only one who finds this hysterically funny every time I hear it?  Follow Annie here on Twitter and start your escape into her world here