On Solitude

turns out alone time fosters creativity

Let’s talk about solitude!

Last month, I started working through a college creative writing textbook, and posting an essay and assignments each month for paying subscribers. This month’s chapter was Discovering Ourselves in Reading, and there is an essay by Nellie Wong in the readings called “Confetti of Voices on New Year’s Night: A Letter to Myself.” In it, she writes that she could have been a minister or a nun, solitary and scholarly. She imagines writing in solitude, though eventually acknowledges it would be impossible because she “live[s] and work[s] as a social being in this material, physical, and economic world.” 

There are assignments in the textbook, but I don’t use those—instead, I read through each chapter and see where I feel nudged to do further study. I’m looking for assignments for life, assignments for making stories and essays, and the assignments in the book are all gradable. The assignment that came to me after reading Nellie Wong was about intentionally seeking solitude to court creativity, but I realized that the assignment had nothing to do with the chapter theme of discovering ourselves through reading, so I’m putting the solitude assignment here, instead, for everyone. 

Craving solitude but acknowledging a need for social interaction had a much different flavor in 1983, when Wong wrote her essay. Writing in solitude was a different process then. If you needed time alone to think, to make things, for the most part, you just closed your door. There was no way to bring thousands of people into the bathroom with you.

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In Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport talks about the importance of solitude, saying “solitude is a prerequisite for original and creative thought.” He defines solitude as any time when you are “free from input from other minds,” and that we are currently in a society which has a real problem with “solitude deprivation,” which is “a state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.” That all rings true for me in a way it probably wouldn’t have for Nellie Wong in 1983.

²

It’s worth noting that when Newport talks about solitude, he says you don’t have to be alone (you could be on a crowded street, lost in your own thoughts, as long as no one is shouting opinions at you), and that being alone does not necessarily mean solitude (like: your phone).

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The importance of solitude is something I know, for sure, but also the sort of thing where I hear about it and think, “oh, crap.” True solitude seems like a lot of work. It’s like when you have toddlers and an article about meditation says “all you need is ten minutes in a quiet space where you won’t be interrupted” and all you can do is laugh. Like, yeah, I know. And I can have Cal Newport tell me solitude is crucial to creativity, but for a long time it felt like, “Yeah, ok, sure, but first let me look at Twitter.” I mean, I wrote and published many books with almost no solitude, so did I really need it? I had developed a bad habit of self-inflicted unsolituding. Any time I had the opportunity for solitude, I resisted. I would go for a walk with my phone in my hand. I would scroll the feed while waiting for dinner to cook.

The first problem was that if I had a moment to think my own thoughts, I would realize some of my thoughts were a problem. My thoughts might create more work for me (“I should take all the plates out of this cabinet and wipe the dust off the shelves”) or would be embarrassing (“I wonder what’s happening on Instagram” on repeat) or uncomfortable (“Am I even good at writing? Does anyone care?”). 

I don’t have an easy answer for this, because there is no easy answer. But recognizing the importance of solitude has changed my life. It was because of facing the need for solitude that I largely got off social media. It was needing to work through my own thoughts that led me to do The Artist’s Way; morning pages are absolutely solitude (it’s your own thoughts, free from interruption from others, for three whole pages). I still want to look at my phone while I’m waiting for dinner to cook, but I don’t.

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It’s nice to have that time to think, and also I end up cleaning up more dishes while I’m cooking, which means I get to my after-dinner book faster. Also, uh: I’m not burning dinner as much as I was. So there’s that. 

I still want to bring my phone with me on walks sometimes. And sometimes I do. I had to go through a solid break from doing that for six months. I had to remember what it was like to walk and only be able to think my own thoughts or look at the world around me. If I’m not sure whether to bring my phone or not, I ask myself some questions to see what I need. Have I had time to think my own thoughts lately? Am I trying to figure out a creative problem? Or do I feel pretty good about all that, and there’s a podcast or audiobook I really want to listen to?

I don’t always get it right. Sometimes I realize I’ve done too much to let in the voices of others. What’s helped me most is recognizing what it feels like when I get the right amount of solitude, and what it feels like when I don’t. When I’ve got it right, I’m inspired: dialog comes to me, or whole paragraphs of text, or ideas for a way the plot can go that I hadn’t thought of before. When I haven’t gotten enough, I feel jangly, sort of frantic, rushed, and agitated. I don’t get creative ideas, or if I do, it’s a piece so tiny that it’s almost unusable. It’s uninspired. Solitude might give me an idea for a particular habit a character might have, one that weaves nicely into her character arc. Lack of solitude might give me a character’s hair color. It’s something, but it’s not much.

The harsh truth is that you need some solitude to do your best creative work. There are times in your life when solitude is in short supply. But there are also things that modern life hands you that are designed to interrupt your solitude, and which so many of us eagerly take without thinking. I’m here to tell you that it’s ok to say no. It’s ok to hide your phone in the far far back of your pants drawer for the entire day so that it stops nagging at you. It’s ok to freewrite for as long as you need to without interruption, or go for a walk without your phone, or to sit on the edge of the bathtub with your eyes closed, breathing deliberately.

Creative inspiration is waiting for you, in those quiet, still moments with only your own thoughts for company.

How are you feeling about your alone time these days? How much solitude do you need? Are you getting it? Let me know in the comments.

Thoughts and Links

• This space elevator is so fun (link via

  The Art of Noticing
  )

• I’m excited about the new Common Shapes podcast from

  Marlee Grace
  and I also heartily recommend the accompanying Creative Ideation Portal, which provided a great way to face what exactly I want to make and do.

• This 9-minute film about the Bulgarian tradition of Kukeri was riveting. They dress as giant hairy monsters with bells on to dance evil spirits away. “You scare away evil so you can have a better year” and “If you do not believe a thing is real, it cannot happen.”

• Have you heard about the literary magazine Little Engines? Micro-distributed, excellent, and FREE. I ordered Issue 8 and it’s wonderful.

• I signed up for Christi Johnson at Mixed Color’s new online class Soft Work: Intuitive Garment Construction, to learn more about how to make my own clothes. I like making clothes but often don’t really understand what I’m doing. It starts May 28.

• I have the Urban Crow Oracle Deck from MJ Cullinane, and her new Raven’s Dream Tarot looks gorgeous. It comes out in July but you can preorder now.

Behind the Paywall

If you like these essays, maybe consider upgrading to paid. You get extra essays and more every month, and you help support the work I do and my ability to keep making more books.

Books I read recently and loved

Disclosure: book links in this newsletter are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, a site which supports independent bookshops.

• I finally read Also by E.B. Goodale (of

  A Tiny Room
  ) and it’s brilliant. How do you visually show a memory? Like this. So good.

• I also finally read the Stonewall Book Award winning Love, Violet, and it’s so sweet and lovely.

• WOW, Big by Vashti Harrison is incredible.

• The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich! I loved this graphic novel. Ramona is getting it for her birthday.

• Oh my gosh, Treasure Island!!! (yes, the exclamation points are in the title). This book made me laugh out loud. A supremely annoying and deluded 25-year-old gets a copy of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and decides she’s going to live her life by it. She’ll be bold! She’ll get a parrot! And yeah, ok, she’ll also have to move back in with her parents because she loses her job and her boyfriend dumps her. If you like unreliable and hilariously self-important narrators, this is for you.

1. Nellie Wong is still around, and still writing, and I’d love to know how she finds solitude in 2023.

2. I already talked about Cal Newport’s concept of solitude deprivation in the cheese video.

3. He also notes “reading a book” as an intrusion on solitude, and like, yessss, ok, I see it, but also reading is a great bridge to solitude. You read a book for a bit, and then you can put it down, and think about it. Or you can read as a lead-in to a deep work session. You can read a book you love, one that is written in a style you want to emulate, as a way to get excited about your own writing. I also love reading books about writing (craft books) when I’m stuck on a book. Also, crucially, in Deep Work, Cal Newport talks about how reading a book uninterrupted counts as deep work, and makes it easier for us to write for longer sessions. So: seek solitude, seek long reading sessions, and that will lead to more fruitful writing sessions.

4. If I’m really antsy, I reach for the New Yorker, which last year I called “humanity’s analog Twitter feed.”