Writing is a Solitary Profession Full of Long Distance Friends

Even if you do your writing in a houseful of people, you have to mentally isolate yourself from part of the action and conversation around you. How can you stay in your character's head while two kids are fighting over the last brownie? Especially when you were saving it as a reward for yourself for finishing this rough chapter? Can a brownie be cut into thirds?

Many writers get up early for their hour of quiet or stay up late. Noises and commotion around them are just too distracting. Others are able to block it out. We go inward with our characters. We step into their world, hear their words, feel their emotions.

Our children are grown, living in other states or countries. It's just Calvin and me here on Towne Crier Road. So, it's relatively quiet. I chuckled at that statement.

Right now, my nearly deaf husband is in the den with his Rosetta Stone playing on his computer, so I'm hearing both the program and him recite French as I write this. Oui, oui. He also has a basketball game playing on his TV AND the "Beatles Greatest Hits" blaring on his stereo.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to find my Zen zone.

I need to be in a solitary mental place to write. That's not to say a place of aloneness, but a place of mental solitude. It takes me a few minutes to block out noises, but I can. I'm able to write in restaurants, coffee shops and Micky-D's.

I also need friends who understand my needs. Thank goodness for the writer friends I've found online. Friends to whom I can zip off a quick question. Friends I can ask to read a scene and provide input. Friends I can complain to about the publishing world. May God bless them all. I've got almost a hundred of them all over the world. I've never met any of them, except for one in Paris. What a delight that was. We met in the Garden of the tulips, and I wish I could write that for you in French, it sounds so much prettier. Elegant. Romantic.

I'm eager for RWA in July. I'll get to meet a few of my writer friends there too. They have no idea how they can make a solitary profession less lonely and confusing.