Writing is undoubtedly a lonely career, but I suspect that people who find it terribly lonely are not writers. I think if you are a writer you realise how valuable the time is when you are absolutely alone with your characters in complete peace. I think it is a necessary loneliness for most writers - they wouldn't want to be always in the middle of everything having a wonderful life. I've never felt lonely as a writer, not really, but I know people do.

If you are really a writer, then it seems like you would have to love being alone imagining things.

Usually my loneliness has nothing to do with my writing. But when it does have something to do with my writing, it always has to do with how other people react to it.

See, when someone asks me what I like doing, and I say I like sewing, then they ask me what I've sewn lately, or tell me about something they saw lately that they liked, or something like that.

But when I tell people that I like writing, then they don't know what to say. They just smile, sort of. Sometimes they ask what genres I do, or how far I am on 'my book', or what it's about. But in the last instance, you have to keep it short, or else it's boring for them, and you can tell it's too much information. Then they go on and try to talk about something else.

I don't know...I think writing is – sort of – well, I don't know what it is. It just happens that way. Writing kills all my conversations.

I wonder if the real reason that so many writers are lonely is because lonely people write more, as opposed to the other way around....

Another thing that the quote brought to mind is what some of the writing mentors I follow say about making sure you balance 'life' and 'writing'. Because 'life' is what good writing comes from. If you are 'lonely' as in separate from people or new stimulus, too much, then your writing is going to suffer for it. Yes, a lot of time needs to be spent alone with your characters and alone with your manuscript. But that's not the only necessity to being a writer. You need to avoid being too 'lonely'.

Interestingly, for me, though, I don't actually draft and imagine my books when I am alone. Just the way the family dynamic is at my house, I could never finish a book if I had to spend time by myself when to do it. So, I usually draft a book in the middle of noise, people, movies, music - everything. The only thing I find it hard to write to, is loud music that has words - like CCM. I often can't write to that at all. But, I can write to something like Handel's Messiah, so it just depends.

It is for me, because I'm rarely ever fully present anywhere. There's always his small part of me in the back of my brain that hangs back, watching and analyzing, as if it was someone else was watching through my eyes. No matter what group of people I'm with or what I'm doing, I always feel like an outsider.