Writing Alone Together
On the lure of the crowd, the call of the hermit's cave, and the deep pleasures of intimacy
Dear fellow writer,
Writing is a fundamentally social act. We write to connect with other people, to persuade and delight them, and to understand our relationships with them.
Paradoxically, however, writing is also a fundamentally solitary act. Even for authors who research and publish collaboratively, most writing starts out as words scrawled, tapped, or typed by one person’s fingers or articulated by one person’s voice in response to signals emanating from that one person’s singular brain.
So where does pleasure sit within this social-to-solitary human spectrum? Everywhere! While researching my 2023 book Writing with Pleasure, I asked nearly 500 academic writers from around the world to recall a time in their life when writing gave them pleasure. The writers in my study described joyful experiences of writing with others and writing solo; of writing among others and writing alone; of writing for others and writing just for themselves.
And then there were all the pleasurable places and practices in between. The crowded café where a lone writer sits scribbling at a corner table, drinking “deep, rich, bitter” coffee and patting the occasional passing dog. The dining room of an old farmhouse where three sisters work silently on their homework, eating steamed damsoms as the trams rattle past. The rented beachhouse where four colleagues gather to bash out a book manuscript, alternating between solo writing sprints and intense group discussion. (“We had ourselves, our computers, our editor, and a lot of gummy bears.”)
I also noted an intriguing variation on the social-yet-solitary theme — scenes of writing infused with a shared intimacy that might best be described as plaisir à deux:
Writing at Harry’s writing desk. Light comes in through the windows, the curtains glow red with the setting sun. Harry helps me edit and reshape my work. I know what I am doing and enjoy the collaborative act of seeing the work take shape. I have been researching this article for 6 months and am excited by the ideas I have. I am sitting on a soft antique chair with the man I love. Aesthetically I like looking at Harry, at the books which line the shelves and at the two computer screens so that we can research and write at the same time. I feel comfortable and excited about the work we are producing. New ideas keep emerging. (Jennifer, lecturer in dance, United Kingdom)
In one memorable narrative, writing alone together takes on the flavor of a secret love affair:
I remember writing and getting drunk. Drunk on alcohol, but also inebriated with life and being together with another writer. This was illicit. We met at the head office where we both worked. He was taking stolen time away from his wife and their infant son. I was in a relationship with a man who had moved back to Germany, leaving me alone in Brussels at the office where I had a rather manual job to fulfil. The writing took place in our separate offices. There was no one else around. Just him two offices further up the corridor and me in my shared office. We were both secretly working on novels. He and I never had an amorous relationship, and yet were conjoined during those stolen hours. (Sofia, associate professor of literature, Sweden)
In another, plaisir à deux swells into plaisir à quatre:
It was fifty years ago—almost exactly. I was an exchange student, writing with a cousin of my host family. Jens—the cousin—and I wrote a letter together, addressed to the host family’s daughter—the cousin’s cousin—and her best friend. Boy and boy writing to girl and girl. We laughed. We (almost) cried. Together we decided that, since his cousin was family, the part of this letter—and it was sort of a collective love letter—that he wrote had to be directed to the friend. But actually he liked the actual cousin more, while I had a crush on the cousin’s friend. The hour or so we spent doing this was among the happiest I can recall. Looking back, I am struck by how unmixed and unhesitant and uncomplicated the pleasure of writing was. (David, professor of German, Vermont, USA)
I love how each of these stories reveals multiple layers of intimacy in and around a scene of writing: between lover and lover, colleague and colleague, boy and boy, boy(s) and girl(s), cousin and cousin, writer and writer.
Psychologist Danielle Knafo observes that words like solitude, relationship, intimacy, and connectedness are fluid, dynamic, and contestable: “We connect, disconnect, leave, come back, move in, move out; boundaries are drawn and erased as a relationship expresses the flux of its function and meaning.” (Knafo, Dancing with the Unconscious, 94). Somewhere in that flux, each of us may be fortunate enough to achieve our own state of pleasurable social balance from time to time: between networking and focus, between conversation and introspection, between expansiveness and intimacy, and between the comforts of human contact and the exhilaration of solitude.
[Adapted from Chapter One of Writing with Pleasure, “Society and Solitude”]
What does social balance in writing look like and feel like to you? Between the allure of solitary writing, the intimacy of a writing partnership, and the comfort of writing in community, where’s your own personal sweet spot?
To explore these questions and others like them, I warmly invite you to join me on September 24 (9-10 am BST) or September 25 (4-5 pm EDT) for my free WriteSPACE Special Event on Writing Together and Alone. I’ll guide you through a sequence of reflective exercises to help you find your own ideal balance between solitary writing and social support, and you’ll learn research-based strategies for establishing an ideal writing partnership, group, or community. You’ll also get a sneak peek at my new WriteSPACE Travel Grants, which I’m offering to members of my WriteSPACE community who don’t want to travel this challenging road on their own.
This FREE one-hour event will be offered twice in one week to accommodate writers anywhere in the world. All registered participants will receive a link to the video recording afterwards, whether or not you attend the live event.
I'd love to see you there!
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Kia pai tō koutou rā (have a great day) – and keep on writing!
Helen
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