I’ve always been quite adamant that, no matter how well-versed you are at discussing, plotting, talking about your creative endeavours, the actual work is done in solitude. I am well aware that there are writing groups that meet virtually, and during those meetings everyone is on camera but writes in silence without interacting, but even so, the work is done inside the head of each writer. To create is mostly a solitary endeavour.
I’ve always felt supremely at ease in my creative cave. Whilst I could tell you that in the strictest sense the cave is my own head, in the loose one it is my study, or maybe my sofa from which I am typing this. It is here, for example, that I tend to write my whodunit as opposed to at the desk downstairs.
But today something unusual happened; I left the cave and met someone for lunch. The unusual element is mostly down to my recovery; I am not hitting the pavements any way near as much as I was and I still need to take it easy, but it is also unusual for me to meet with someone purely because I am exceptionally selective in who I meet with and how long for. I am quite suspicious of people who want other people around them all the time and whilst this suspicion is character-based, it is also intrinsically connected to the inability to create when I am with others. In simple terms, if I am sitting in a café talking to you, then I am not at my desk writing.
Clearly, I cannot always be at my desk writing, neither would I want to be, which is why when those slivers of opportunity to meet with someone I really like occur, I enjoy them enormously. Plot twist: it was one of those rare, pre-winter days in which London gives the best of itself, with a temp which is dutifully reinvigorating, a blue sky out of The Simpsons, and the glorious slanted light of last November which makes everything and everyone look a lot better than they are. Bliss.