The Isolated Writer - Andrew Crofts
At the time of writing this, “isolation”
is gradually morphing from “voluntary” to “compulsory” around the world because
the human race is under attack from a clever new virus.
It has set me thinking about the
whole business of being a loner in life.
Like many people who choose to
write for a living, I have always been a solitary soul, a watcher of life
rather than an active participant. If I hadn’t had the good fortune to marry
someone gregarious and have a great many children I would probably be living up
a mountain in a cave by now, (that’s the romantic version, I would more likely
have spent my life locked in a bedsit in Brighton, eating ready-made soup
amongst stacks of old newspapers).
Maybe it stems from being an only
child who was very much left to his own devices most of the time, (always good
to make the parents responsible for everything that isn’t quite as glitteringly
wonderful about one’s personality as one would like), or maybe I’m just a sociopath.
Whatever the reason, it meant that
I really had to find a craft at which I could earn a living which would allow
me to be in my own company for a great deal of the time.
But I was also born extremely
curious, or maybe “nosey” would be a better word, with an urge to visit new and
strange places and a habit of asking way too many personal questions of people
before it is strictly appropriate to do so.
Combine these two character-traits
and writing becomes the obvious career choice. It allows me to stick my nose
into worlds that would otherwise be closed to me, ask all the questions I want,
hear amazing stories and then go away and write those stories, (or fictional
versions of them), on my own. It allows me to spend large chunks of my life
reading and watching films or television, and many hours staring out the window,
day-dreaming and making up stuff in my head.
These are all the things I was
doing as a child. Nothing has really changed in sixty years.
Because I love to live this way, it
has always puzzled me that more people don’t look for ways to work from home
rather than commuting in unpleasant conditions into offices where they have to co-operate
with other people. Whenever I have voiced this puzzlement to others it has been
explained to me that I am the oddball here, not the rest of the world. Most
people, apparently, relish the crowds and the socialising. Apparently, we are
meant to be herd animals, not lone hunters. Most people go stir crazy if they
have to endure their own company for too long and few have the necessary
self-discipline to work hard without someone looking over their shoulders. This
is what I am told.
So, it will be interesting to see
whether the enforced isolation of the coming months makes any long-lasting
changes to the way people work and interact in the future, or whether most
people will be rushing eagerly back to their crowded trains and communal offices
the moment the all-clear is sounded.
Comments
And, like Jan, I miss what was supposed to be a job but which, in my case, consisted in sitting around talking to young, intelligent, interested students about books and getting paid for it.