Writing Doesn’t Have to Be Solitary

This summer I’ve been traveling in Colorado with my husband, Eric. We’ve been visiting our daughter, taking many beautiful hikes, and, as always, reading and writing a lot.

This is the longest time we’ve traveled alone together since before our kids were born, and I’ve been remembering all of the other places we’ve spent time—traveling, exploring, but always reading and writing, and talking together: In our first apartment in Cambridge, when Eric was in his MFA writing program and I was a Senior in college, taking my first poetry workshop; through times in Paris, Greece, Italy, New York City and then decades in Boston as we worked and parented—always writing, always reading.

It's interesting, because when I was young, I had the idea that reading and especially writing was solitary, a solo expedition into unexplored wildernesses of thought and feeling.

But all along, I've been sharing my writing with my partner--and of course with other teachers, friends, students, and more.

I know I'm very lucky to have a partner I can share so much with, but most of us have more companionship than we sometimes are aware of--and if we don't have that companionship, we can also look for it.

So as we head into this weekend, I invite you to think about those times when you have made a connection with others through reading and writing. Maybe those others are people with whom you talk and share things in real time. Maybe those others are writers you don't know in real time or aren't even alive. Maybe those others are trees or birds, the sky or the earth.

Because solitary is one thing writing is not — writing is about connection, dialogue. It's about sharing, seeing, and re-seeing.

In my Align Community yesterday, we talked about how having community and connection with others allows us to have more connection with ourselves.

When we feel alienated from our work, when the harsh inner critic comes in, when we start to worry what others—or we ourselves—will think of our work, when we turn our attention to gatekeepers, when we run into writer's block, what can bring us back into a better relationship with our work is if we remember that we have the support of people we trust, people who have our back.

I know there have been many times that just talking with Eric about my work has given me new confidence, has allowed me to pause, come back to my body, and re-engage with my work.

Eric has been my first reader and my last reader for almost everything I've ever written and published. And I've been his reader.

Over the years, we've given each other some difficult-to-hear feedback. Sometimes we tell each other frankly that a whole section needs to be taken out or even that a project doesn't really work in its current form. Sometimes we ask difficult questions of the work, but because we fundamentally trust and support each other, that feedback, if not necessarily easy to hear at first, is welcome.

I think, in general, perhaps, it comes down to feeling that there is a relationship not of conditional but unconditional support. And as important as having that with other people, it's most important that you have that with yourself.

So this brings me full circle: it's not that writing is solitary—that sounds isolating. But rather, writing is a vehicle to come into deeper relationship, with more generosity and trust, not only with others, but also with yourself. It's an invitation to see what is supporting you already and to search out deeper connection.