Writing is a lonely business. It’s time-consuming,

frustrating, terror-inspiring and bad for your posture. Its

other prominent features include long hours of typing, frequent intervals of staring at blank pages or screens, and no guarantee whatsoever that anything you produce will be worth the effort. In addition to which, in the words of Ben Hecht, "fun is the enemy."

In fact, among the writers in my practice, the isolation and loneliness of writing is often the salient issue.

"I can’t go in that room anymore," one client, a successful screenwriter, said to me. He worked in an office at home. "I’ve been going in there for almost twenty years now...alone."

He claimed it was the sheer weight of loneliness that was taking the toll. "I keep thinking of other things I could be doing---spending time with my family and friends, being outdoors. Having a regular job. Not a series of deals, new scripts with new problems, each assignment so life-and-death. Why am I putting myself through this?"

"Is that a rhetorical question," I asked, "or are you really wondering about it?"

"You mean, why do I do it? Keep writing? Because I have to...it’s like a curse."

"Or a calling," I suggested. "When someone asked Stephen King why he writes the kind of stories he does, he answered, ‘What makes you think I have a choice?’"

"Uh-huh." He slumped in his seat. "It’s lonely, that’s all. I feel like the goddamn Maytag repairman. It’s too quiet in there, by myself."

"It can be. But let me suggest something. Maybe you’re not in there by yourself. You share that room with the memory of every person you’ve ever encountered---your parents, teachers, friends and enemies..."

"Listen, my office is eight-by-ten feet. If anybody else is skulking around in there, I sure don’t see ‘em."

"You know what I mean. Besides, in one sense, loneliness can mean being disconnected. Not just from others, but from your interior self. You carry a universe of feelings, hopes, and fantasies inside you. Maybe if you let them out, and explored them fully, the office won’t feel so lonely."

He wasn’t buying this approach. Or any other I offered.

"Okay," I said at last. "I’m with you. Writing is lonely. Let’s say you can’t go back in that room anymore. Now what?"

"What do you mean, now what? I’m gonna keep writing, I just hate the loneliness."

"Boy, I hear you."

"That’s it? You hear me?"

"Well, you said yourself that you’re going to continue

writing and you hate the loneliness. Both facts seem to co-

exist."

"But that sucks. I don’t want to feel lonely writing. Or at least, I don’t want to mind it so much."

"I hope you get there. Until then, ask yourself this: Can you accept both your desire to write and your pain of feeling lonely? As Jung might say, can you love that struggle? Not the triumph of one side or the other, but the struggle itself. Can you tolerate the tension of that?"

He grew pensive. "I don’t know. That’s a good question."

We come back to this issue again and again in therapy. Some days his loneliness overwhelms him; other times a patch of solid writing makes him so excited to get back to "that room" that he actually feels lonely---in essence, disconnected---when he’s not writing.

There’s no "solution" to loneliness, nor should there be. It’s part of the human experience, and often a component of any creative act. I believe it’s finding some equanimity in the swirl of all your feelings about writing that enables you to keep at it. That all aspects of the work, even those you dislike, are merely grist for the mill.

So whether you "love the struggle" or "feel like the goddamn Maytag repairman," you’re being where you need to be, doing what you need to do. You’re a writer.