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desperanceAs I was just saying over dinner - and as I have I think discussed in this same journal heretofore - something odd has happened to me recently.
I spent thirty years being someone who worked alone, in my own study, and went out in pursuit of company. It worked very well, in both directions. Only in the last handful of years, it seems totally to have inverted; I mostly look to company to come here - and I do look for it, for I am that most curious of creatures, an introvert who loves to socialise* - and in the meantime, if I want to work, I need to go out in search of somewhere else to do it. That might be the library, it might be the coffee shop; it might be the clubhouse in the yard. But it's almost never here, in my study at my desktop, where I always thought I was meant to be.
Like today, this morning, I went down to the library and wrote 700 words or so before I had to go shopping (rye flour and sesame seeds, since you ask: I can't get either of them locally, but if I treat the library as base camp then they are local to that). And then I came home, and was jittering about doing this and that and getting no writing done at all - until Dave and Katherine came round. Dave and I repaired to the clubhouse with laptops, and lo: I was all writey-writey, and I ended up with over two thousand words today. Just because there was somebody else there. We weren't competing, we weren't comparing, we were barely talking at all; but he was doing his work, and so I was doing mine.
I've been saying for a decade now that I'm the last of my generation, the last of those for whom writing really was a lonely business. But the modern manners seem to be creeping up on me: not so much the critiquing and sharing and so forth, but certainly the writing dates, the let's-get-together-to-do-this. Even if my partners don't realise that's what's happening, as in the library this morning; but they were there and I was there and we were doing our stuffs, and stuff got done.
Here in the study, I mostly read the internets and write blog posts and letters and such. Mostly blog posts, actually. And listen to the sounds of sleeping cats, that's always good.
*I'm the one who sits there in the group and listens a lot and almost never says anything. I love being with people, I'm just not so good at contributing. I have had friends scold me for this, but that's only because they completely misunderstand why I'm there. I do "look at me, see what I can do!" professionally, it's my job, it's what writing is; in company I'm off duty, and I don't want anyone to look at me or expect anything from me. Except dinner, I can do that.
I spent thirty years being someone who worked alone, in my own study, and went out in pursuit of company. It worked very well, in both directions. Only in the last handful of years, it seems totally to have inverted; I mostly look to company to come here - and I do look for it, for I am that most curious of creatures, an introvert who loves to socialise* - and in the meantime, if I want to work, I need to go out in search of somewhere else to do it. That might be the library, it might be the coffee shop; it might be the clubhouse in the yard. But it's almost never here, in my study at my desktop, where I always thought I was meant to be.
Like today, this morning, I went down to the library and wrote 700 words or so before I had to go shopping (rye flour and sesame seeds, since you ask: I can't get either of them locally, but if I treat the library as base camp then they are local to that). And then I came home, and was jittering about doing this and that and getting no writing done at all - until Dave and Katherine came round. Dave and I repaired to the clubhouse with laptops, and lo: I was all writey-writey, and I ended up with over two thousand words today. Just because there was somebody else there. We weren't competing, we weren't comparing, we were barely talking at all; but he was doing his work, and so I was doing mine.
I've been saying for a decade now that I'm the last of my generation, the last of those for whom writing really was a lonely business. But the modern manners seem to be creeping up on me: not so much the critiquing and sharing and so forth, but certainly the writing dates, the let's-get-together-to-do-this. Even if my partners don't realise that's what's happening, as in the library this morning; but they were there and I was there and we were doing our stuffs, and stuff got done.
Here in the study, I mostly read the internets and write blog posts and letters and such. Mostly blog posts, actually. And listen to the sounds of sleeping cats, that's always good.
*I'm the one who sits there in the group and listens a lot and almost never says anything. I love being with people, I'm just not so good at contributing. I have had friends scold me for this, but that's only because they completely misunderstand why I'm there. I do "look at me, see what I can do!" professionally, it's my job, it's what writing is; in company I'm off duty, and I don't want anyone to look at me or expect anything from me. Except dinner, I can do that.