Writing a book...

… is a very solitary but also a very communal undertaking.

Since the characters and the story spring from my mind, I can only do this when I’m alone with my tablet (no, the paper kind!) or my computer or my little pocket notebook or just my imagination.  This requirement isn’t actually as limiting as it might seem, since I’m entirely capable of being profoundly solitary on an airplane full of strangers or sitting across the room from the woman with whom I’ve built a life. I’ve been alone in my bunk aboard ship with a half dozen other sailors within arm’s reach. Or at my desk with a dog snoozing on the carpet just next to my foot.

In my world, alone is not causally connected to lonely. I’ve never, ever been lonely when thinking about the book. I’ve been frustrated, angry, disappointed, confused, discouraged. But never lonely although always alone.

I suppose the obvious conclusion is that it’s the presence of the characters that prevents me feeling lonely. And certainly, there’s an element of that. But it would be a lie to claim that communion with Julia or Georgia or Max or Oreo makes me feel that I’m keeping company.  In order for that to be true, the characters would need to have lives – thoughts, passions, motivations, memories – independent of me. Of course, that’s not possible since they’re each and all inventions of my mind.

The reason I can’t be lonely when working on the book is that it is in a very real sense a conversation. The fact that the book itself represents a soliloquy and that the other parties to the conversation won’t speak until I stop does not make it less interactive. Because until someone reads it and makes it their own, taking from it some of what I intend but even more what they make of it, the conversation will not have begun.

That I can’t know when or even if anyone else will read it in no way detracts from the nature of the thing. It is the opening line of a conversation that is no less so if the other person fails to hear or elects to turn and walk away.

It’s a dangerous thing, beginning a conversation when you can’t know when or in what situation the other conversant will hear your words. It takes confidence or cluelessness, not sure which.  

Perhaps a bit of each.