Isn’t it lonely?

The ques­tion is often put to me: “Isn’t it lone­ly being a writer? Sit­ting there at your com­put­er, hav­ing no one else around?”

I wish it was lone­ly. I some­times pine for soli­tude. In truth, I am sur­round­ed, bad­gered, hound­ed by my char­ac­ters. In the midst of a project they nev­er leave me alone. “You’re think­ing about your book!” my wife will (kind­ly) tell me alto­geth­er too aware that I have not been lis­ten­ing to what she (or any­one else for that mat­ter) is say­ing or doing.

In truth, I might be sit­ting at the table (at a din­ner table!) sur­round­ed by nice, chat­ty and inter­est­ing folks, and all of a sud­den my head is telling me, “That’s not what she would do! That’s not what he would say. They would react in a dif­fer­ent way. It should work this way.”

The she, he, and they, are my char­ac­ters. Pes­ter­ing me. Telling me what to do. And write. And since I am always work­ing on some­thing, it can be rather annoy­ing, all these people.

Yes, it is slight­ly (or more than that) obses­sive. And yes, it’s not total­ly a wrong thing, because I am get­ting the book right. Or think I am. I do tru­ly think that it’s very hard to write by fits and starts, though many have to work that way.

Alas, speak­ing for myself I need to be total­ly immersed in my fic­tion­al world, seek­ing to make it real. Sort of a luna­cy, but absolute­ly not lone­ly. I wish, sort of …