I read a quote today from Mary Cheever, John Cheever’s 90 year old widow, rejecting the notion that her husband’s inner loneliness was due to his life in the suburbs:

          “His was the loneliness of a writer, when he would sit  by himself   working alone. They all complain about it. It’s not a social craft.”

Sometimes I like to be contrary for the sake of it, but my first thought when I read that quote was that she got it backwards. Writers are lonely pretty much all the time except when they’re writing. The focus, the intensity, the mind engaged — this is not a lonely state.

In my experience, it’s the dinner parties, the award ceremonies, the neglectful agent and editor, the jealous and/or smug friends that are lonely making. It’s the bad reviews or no reviews, the not knowing what to write, the rejection. These are the things that will kill you, along with the gin as in Cheever’s case.

Filed under: Writing |