The Writer’s Life: The importance of solitude and fresh air

“…a writer works alone, indoors, in a room, on a chair, with the door shut.  Any young person who wonders what his or her chances are of becoming a writer ought to assess their ability to deal with solitude and, figuratively speaking, an entire working life thrashing around in inspissated darkness.  It has been said that writing is a rat race in which you never get to meet the other rats.”
Paul Theroux, Fresh Air Fiend

I’ve been re-reading Paul Theroux’s “Fresh Air Fiend”, an essay he wrote which was included in a collection of the same name.  The quote above is from the first paragraph of that essay, and it struck me as an accurate observation about the act of writing.

I do work alone, indoors, in a room, on a chair.  If my office had a door, I’d shut it.  For now, I settle for closing my curtain dividers.  Some writers take this to the extreme.  John Cheever worked in a windowless basement room.  Raymond Carver preferred to work inside his car.  (source)

Doing creative work alone, especially during the first stages, has its advantages.

• Concentration. In his book “On Writing”, Stephen King talked about writing your first draft with the door shut.  First of all, you won’t be open to the random whims of the world around you, whether it’s your family, the household pet, or your outgoing friends.  Shutting your door gives you the time and space to do your work without distractions.
• Purity. Working alone often means that the voice you will hear the loudest is your own.  Giving volume to your own voice gives your work purity and uniqueness, untainted by what you think others might prefer to hear.  This makes the act of shutting one’s door symbolic as well.  You don’t just shut a physical door, but you temporarily close your mind off to potential criticism and praise of your work.  Right now, it’s the work itself that matters.
• Seriousness. The fact that you are giving your work its own closed space shows that you take it seriously.  You are not to be disturbed, just like the big shot CEO who won’t take phone calls during certain hours of the day.

Sometimes, however, too much solitude can be detrimental to the work.  As writers or artists, we often need fresh perspectives and insights.  We can’t get these if we’re in a room by ourselves most of the time.

Also, we need other random and unexpected things to stimulate creativity.  Unless we go about redecorating and rearranging our work rooms every week, our work space becomes an all too familiar habit and we start overlooking the details.  Even then, I doubt that most of us have the time and energy to devote to redecorating regularly.

So how do we do our work well without suffocating ourselves indoors?  Where do we get the stimuli that will help us generate new ideas? The obvious answer, of course, is to head outside.

This is why it comes no surprise that in his essay, Theroux talks about how kayaking is necessary activity for him as a writer. Near the end of the essay, he writes “If passion implies escape …then passion is the right word for how I feel about setting off in a small boat…. I give thanks for this little craft, because without it, a career of writing would be like a life sentence in solitary confinement.  So it was writing that forced me to become a fresh air fiend, and that madness, that passion, has enlightened me, as the greatest passions ought to.”

While I can’t exactly set off in a small boat whenever I want, I have my own activities that balance out the quiet solitude of writing indoors.  One of my favorite of these activities is carpentry, which I’ve already discussed in a previous blog post.  I also take long walks after work, and if so inclined, I do a bit of gardening.  These activities give me the much needed mental rest and fresh air that allow me to come back to my work with a different - and hopefully wiser - perspective.

Do you work better alone?  Do you have any outdoor activities that balance this out?  How do these activities affect your work?

Image by Joe Zlomek from sxc.hu

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