Romantically uninvolved

It’s a disclaimer commonly offered to new writers everywhere: If you want to be successful, you’re going to have to learn how to be alone for long periods of time. I thought I understood that perfectly.

What I never thought to consider were the alternative interpretations of this warning. Now, as writing is beginning to absorb more and more of my time, I’m starting to wonder if, instead of “alone,” they really meant “romantically uninvolved.”

I can see why they don’t come right out and say it like that – just the mention of those two words brings to my mind images of a sort of lonely, virginal existence, the kind that is generally reserved for monks and police officers.

Recently, when I visited my family back home, my sister had been asking me, “So, are you seeing any girls right now?” I laughed in response and said no, and she paused for a moment and then inevitably followed with another question – “Are you seeing any guys?”

It used to be a humiliating exchange of dialogue, but I’ve grown used to it. I’m guessing that at this point, she just assumed I’m asexual. But what am I supposed to say? “No, I’m not gay, Courtenay. I’m a writer.”

The fact is I’m motivated by something with which a lot of girls aren’t particularly familiar. If I’m on a deadline, I’m liable to do anything to get myself in the mind-set to write. Sometimes, that means swift isolation in the form of an unannounced camping trip or an hour-long drive through the country.

I’m also prone to wandering around the streets and the hallways of my house aimlessly during especially furious brainstorming sessions, an activity that, if observed from the outside, makes some people feel ill at ease.

Most relationships are characterized by sacrifice, or as I’d like to put it, a spineless tendency to cave in when a significant other demands that the other conform to his or her lifestyle. That’s just not an option for me. My work depends on a certain state of mind and a self-preservation that seems to void any such attempt at romance.  

After talking with a friend of mine, a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I’m convinced that my love problem is something common to artists in all fields. He relayed to me what a teacher had told him once during a conversation that, I’d imagine, could only have taken place at an art school: The further along people get in their artistic process, the harder it is to find someone who really understands them.

I think this is true, and my experience seems to prove it. Dating a writer is not something for the fainthearted, and usually it ends with each party limping away, wishing it never happened in the first place.

But assuming there are a few girls out there, maybe artists themselves, who can handle such an uncanny relationship, I don’t think I can give up on romance entirely.

For now, though, I’m happily solo.