I Just Want to Be Alone So I Can Write Again
It’s Saturday morning, still dark outside. I just rolled over and checked my phone — six a.m. A year ago, I would have gone back to sleep. But now, I carefully slink out of the bed and tiptoe down the stairs. All I want is a few hours. Alone.
I make a cup of tea and settle into the couch. Open the laptop and quietly read something I wrote yesterday to determine if it works or not. I make slight adjustments and reread them again. And again. Then, the magic starts to happen. In the silence, the words come, piecing themselves together. Sentences that were just okay become stronger; ideas start crystallizing.
And then I hear footsteps upstairs. A door opening and closing. Can’t everyone sleep in? It’s Saturday.
My husband comes down the stairs, gets a cup of coffee, plops himself on the couch, and turns on Sports Center. I got an hour to myself, but it feels like seconds. The thing is, he is doing nothing wrong. He didn’t even speak to me — he knows not to when I’m writing — but that magic that was happening just evaporated into thin air.
This is a scenario that has happened just about every morning for the last few months. It is a long and boring story but the net of it is the only option of locations for me to work during COVID is the living room. The same one my husband and two teenagers need to walk through 20 times a day on their way to the kitchen. (I get that lunches are required but how many drinks and snacks do these people need?) It is also the same place they stop and loudly say hi to the dog at least half of the time they go to the kitchen. (The dog will come to you if she wants to chat, just keep moving along.)
… being a writer is a different kind of job. I need time alone and I didn’t realize how much until COVID happened.
I think I was patient in the beginning. I know I didn’t cringe every time I heard steps on the stairs. But at some point, I lost it. Was it when I started debating waking up at two in the morning and working in the middle of the night? Was it when I started perusing the internet for tiny house kits that could be turned into home offices? I don’t know.
What I do know is that being a writer is a different kind of job. I need time alone and I didn’t realize how much until COVID happened. No kids walking through the room. No background noise of my husband’s endless Zoom meetings. No dog staring at me to go on another walk — that one is my own doing since in the early stages I created a COVID dog-walking monster.
What I need is silence and a laptop. I need to think. I get it, I know it doesn’t look like I’m doing anything but that staring at the screen silently is half my job. Rereading the same passage 20 times is, too. This is not filling in numbers on a spreadsheet. Creativity is not a task you can do for 30-minute clips. It comes when it wants to, and it requires the space to let it happen.
The irony isn’t lost to me. COVID has forced almost everyone into a lonelier existence. Most of the world is missing their old lives. They long to see other people, go back to in-person meetings, and casual conversations by the water cooler. I’m just missing my old life, too. The one where I was essentially in a self-imposed isolation and happily writing.
Darcey Gohring is a freelance editor and writer based outside New York City. She specializes in memoir and personal essay. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, Insider, HuffPost, Zibby Mag, among others. She is a contributing author to the anthology book, Corona City: Voices From an Epicenter, and recently completed her first novel. Darcey leads writing workshops and has served as the keynote speaker for conferences all over the northeastern United States. Visit www.darceygohring.com to learn more.
