You Don't Have to Isolate Yourself to Be An Author

I don't know about you, but it seems every horror novel I pick up starts with a writer sitting alone in the cabin they rented so that they can have some time alone and away from the world to write their novels.

There's a reason these novels are always in the horror section of the bookstore and not the romance - 

Writing is already a lonely endeavor, spending the day wrapped in our minds, creating characters we hold close to us like dear friends, crafting the perfect man that we would let sweep us off our feet any day - or one who our rational mind knows we should call the cops on if we ever meet him in public, but in fiction for some reason it's endearing. 

Writers craft their worlds not only from the inside of magnificent minds but also from taking inspiration from the world around us. 

The quirky best friend in your novel could be based on your younger sibling. 

The heroine could be you, conquering her fears on the page instead of real life.

The villain could be the jerk ex of yours that always put you down no matter what you did or how hard you tried. 

You can base entire characters on people you've only observed on the bus or while walking around your city. 

You can't learn to write mannerisms that turn your character from words on a page into living people in the minds of your readers if you don't observe these actions in real life. 

Not only do writers need to observe and interact with people in our everyday lives to write believable characters, but we also need these interactions to keep us human. 

We are more than just robots that sit in front of a screen and type out story after story. 

We live, we love, we get our hearts broken, and we go out for drinks and dance the night away.

We can't lock ourselves away and expect that a story is magically going to be written in our isolation. 

Because you know what you're going to do with all that isolation?

You're not going to write. You're going to spend the time scrolling through your phone reaching out to those you left behind becuase you're bored and lonely and being alone in a cabin in the words is just creepy! 

If you need to lock yourself in your room for a few hours a day or once a week that is perfectly acceptable, as long as when the writing time is done you rejoin the land of social interaction and remember that there are people outside of your books who miss you and that are there for you.

Always. 

With love, 

B.K. xo xo

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