The Loneliness of Being a Writer and How to Make it Better

The air had spring on its breath. Sweet, muddy, messy, fecund, dog poopy, chirpy, blooming, trashy, sexy spring. Taking a long, deep inhale through my nose, I opened my mouth to sing for the trees. A group of us were gathered in a clearing beneath red pines in a city park. Raising our voices for Tree Sisters, serenading the trees' bare branches, trunks, roots. We sang for them because they always sing for us. They sing when we’re choking them with toxins or chopping them down. They sing with a trunk full of oxygen so we can breathe cleaner as they absorb our poisons. They sing with their shoots unfurling into leaves, fruits dripping from their branches so we can taste their juices and be nourished. They sing to provide habitat to birds and other animals, and to keep the soil from eroding and washing away our homes. Can you hear them singing, dear reader? When I gather with other women, even if it's only for a couple hours, I can feel my spirit soar. And that's exactly what happened on this day around International Women's Day. My energy strengthened as I re-calibrated. My well filled up, so that I hummed along with my book writing for at least a week after. As writers we like to paint ourselves as separate from others. Writing's a solitary activity that demands we shut the world out. While this is mostly true, we writers sometimes take this too far when we think we've no right to ask for help when working on a book project. Perhaps it's because we feel shame exercising our creativity while the world spins out of control. Or because we don't value what we do, or we don't want to be a bother. I definitely have some of that poor me mentality when it comes to plodding along with my art-making. The long-suffering artist must take on the pain of her ar