Writing Is Often Difficult, So Is Living With A Writer. . . Or So I’ve Been Told
Living alone means being able to write without interruption.
It’s hard to explain to a non-writer what interruption does to concentration. The frustration of having found just the right word, the exact turn of phrase only to have it vanish into thin air because of an interruption.
My former husband — former largely because he didn’t understand about interruption — used to pop his head around my office door and tell me something. Anything. The toaster is on the blink. He hasn’t seen the cat for hours.
I’d give him a blank look meant to indicate I had loftier things on my mind. It wasn’t particularly effective, he still interrupted.
“It’s taken, what a minute, two minutes of your time,” he’d say during our inevitable arguments on the subject. “Just go back to work, I won’t bother you again.”
After these discussions, I’d feel pretentious and self-absorbed. It wasn’t as though I was working on some great literary masterpiece. My writing wasn’t exactly paying the bills. Couldn’t I be a little more tolerant? A little less precious?
I couldn’t. Neither of us were happy.
If you want companionship, he’d tell people, don’t marry a writer.
Living alone definitely means fewer interruptions — at least from other people. The irony is that when I am alone, I'm not necessarily more productive.
Mostly because I interrupt myself.
Especially when the writing progress slows down to a crawl. When stringing a couple of sentences together is akin to slogging through sludge. At such times (meaning almost every day) I turn to the refrigerator where help is sometimes available in the cheese drawer. Or in a forkful of leftovers. If that doesn’t work, I look on Amazon for things I don’t need and can’t afford. Or maybe check e-mail.
Or Google how hot it is in Saudia Arabia.
Or whether you can cook radishes. You can. They’re good. I think I have some. I’ll need a recipe. I find one. But I don’t have shallots or creme fraiche. Or, I discover, radishes.
