The Non-Solitary Act of Writing

Empty spaces at Quincy Market

By Jessica A. Kent

After the virus arrived, it didn’t take long for the bookstores to shut down.

First it was the gatherings — author readings, book clubs — but then it was only a few days until stores made more long-term decisions. Some kept staff on and continued to service online orders with shipping and curb-side pick-up, until that became too tenuous. Others who did in-store only sales simply closed, while others launched GoFundMe campaigns to stay alive.

Then the public libraries closed, cancelling their events and shutting their stacks. And with the increasing recommendations around social distancing, the bars closed, silencing open mic nights and poetry slams. Writing centers moved classes online. Conferences and literary events, gatherings that felt more like reunions with friends, were called off.

As someone who runs a website that covers the Boston literary community, I keep myself aware of the goings-on, and watched the dominos fall in real time. I collect all the local literary events onto one master calendar — it’s usually a few hundred each month — and I remember the evening just a few weeks ago when I went through and deleted every event I had excitedly posted just a few weeks before that (and I needed a strong drink when I did so, so as not to think about what the implications were).

It only took about a week for a thriving literary scene to evaporate.

Then the tweets started. Bless the folks keeping high spirits and humor during this pandemic, as not only public life but creativity disappeared. They reminded us that while Shakespeare was in quarantine for the plague, he wrote King Lear (however half-true that is). What better time to work on your writing than in isolation, they encouraged.

And I agree. It’s true: Writers are best in isolation.

There’s a reason for writing retreats, the pull-back from society to focus on the work at hand. Writers draw towards either the ocean or the desert because of the vacancy, the expansion. Writing comes in those stretches of silent moments when you can rummage through your vocabulary to find the right word, or rifle through your brain’s card catalogue to find the right reference. Existential dread aside, a forced sabbatical from our daily lives to stay home seemed the perfect opportunity for creation.

Reading happens in those quiet moments as well. A book is inherently a silent, solitary experience. We long for winter days to curl up with a good book and a cup of coffee, or, for the audio folks, we don a pair of headphones during a long commute. We don’t sit around the room and read to one another anymore, nor play an audio book aloud like a radio program (rare are the folks who do). TV is the communal experience; books are still one-on-one, a private story, author to reader.

And with both reading and writing, the engagement can come later — showing a piece to a writing group, chatting about a novel at a book club — but that engagement isn’t mandated. The initial act always comes down to just you. I can stay in my apartment and write, and there’s no mandate for me to engage with the local literary community at all.

So having everything shut down shouldn’t be that detrimental, right?

Then why do I feel like I’ve been unplugged? Why do I feel like someone in suspension, like I’m navigating a new phantom limb? Like my art is whole, and I am self-contained, and the opportunity for writing presents itself, but the vacuum is too great?

Because writing isn’t a solitary act. Because there’s only so far you can go alone.

I realized this when I tuned into a virtual reading a few weeks ago. Two local authors were hosting Noir at the Bar Boston, where a handful of mystery and thriller writers gathered to read their work. Over 160 people attended online, filling up the chat with greetings to friends and questions for the authors, and I saw folks I hadn’t seen in a while, and remembered how much I, as a writer, needed this.

You never realize how much inspiration you get by physically going to a bookstore or a library to browse the shelves and see those who have gone before you, or pick up a new release by an author you’ve never met but consider an old friend, the covers laid out like a map of new worlds.

You never realize how grounded you become around other writers doing the same thing as you, wrestling with the same plot, setting, and character issues as you, submitting to literary magazines and querying agents like you, trying to be creative like you.

You never realize how often you see the same people, the same booksellers, the same writers, the same attendees in the same spaces and get used to the almost church-like ritual of an author event: the greeting, the reading, the questions, the signing line, the conversations with fellow writers and readers afterward.

You never realize how outside of yourself your own writing process is until the social leg of the chair has been kicked away. You never realize how writing is not a solitary act until you have to do it in isolation.

Virtual will become reality again, bookstores will reopen, workshops will move from Zoom to circled chair, and perhaps we’ll take it all for granted again. In the meantime, I’ll take the virtual interactions I can get, and provide those I can provide, and try to write my own King Lear.