Am I becoming a recluse?

From Kill Zone Blog: #WritersLife: Am I Becoming a Recluse?

The other day a friend asked me to lunch. At first, I was excited about it, but as I was getting ready, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d rather work on the WIP.

This happens all the time. A friend will say, “Let’s get together.”

“Sure. Just let me finish the first draft.”

After I’m done, they say, “Now can we get together?”

“But I’m getting ready to do the first read-through.”

“Now that you’re letting the book cool, can we grab lunch?”

“Oooh, ahh, I started the next book.”

This made me laugh. The person who wrote this post — Sue Coletta — is considering this phenomenon, not necessarily considering it a problem. That’s good to see because I don’t consider it a problem. I should add, I’m even more of a hermit than Coletta, who indicates here that she says yes more often than no to suggestions about getting together with friends. Personally, I don’t really welcome (most) suggestions about going out to do anything with anyone. Sure, there are exceptions. There just aren’t very many exceptions.

I realized a long time ago — wow, about 25 years ago, I guess — that fundamentally, as a rule, when someone says to me, “Hey, would you like to [go somewhere] and [do something]?” the answer is almost always, “No, not really, but thanks for asking.” Once I specifically realized that, I kind of leaned into the hermit thing and quit worrying about it and that has worked for me ever since.

Coletta, musing upon this, finishes: An increase in serotonin induces feelings of happiness. Runners chase the same euphoria. Am I addicted to having fun? I’d say “alone” but we’re not really alone, are we? We’re with our characters, who are as real to us as anyone.

Our characters, our dogs, our cats, and music playing. Unless I forget to turn on the music, which often happens when I’m writing “in flow.”

I’m sure not all writers are hermits … well, not that sure. Probably somewhere, someone is a writer and also a social butterfly. Hard to imagine, but the world is wide.

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