Whatever you write, and even whether you do it with a partner or in a writers’ room, there are hours and hours when you are on your own with the keyboard or the pen. Nobody with you, nobody making you write either, and probably every other writer has a new book out, is promoting their new play, is doing all the talking and the socialising that lies the other side of thousands of hours of lonely work.

If you can’t do the time, you’re not a writer.

Only, even though there is no way around the solitude, even though you’d better enjoy it or else, there is a way around the solitude. Hello. As I write this, it’s early on Friday morning but I know you’re there, I know we’ll be talking, I am writing this to you.

But then also tomorrow I’m attending the National Writers’ Conference in Birmingham. (Booking has closed but you can read more about it here.) It’s the first time I won’t be working at the conference so it’s the first time I’m not thinking about the job, not thinking about the writing, just looking forward to seeing writers I know and admire and relish, and meeting writers I’ve not seen before. There’s also an actual programme of events at the conference and that’s the practical, sensible reason for going, but it’s the being with writers and specifically these writers that’s why you really go.

And two days ago, I was in my office alone, but I was also on a Zoom call with, I think, 100 or more members of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. It was the Guild’s AGM so again there was an actual programme and the Guild is a trade union, not some writing group, so the order of business is serious. Plus we are in such hard times for writers in the UK and the Writers’ Guild is all that prevents us being screwed over, that the order of business is very serious.

So very serious that you can’t believe how funny and happy the AGM was. We are alone, but we’re alone together.

And as of the end of that meeting, I am one of the two Deputy Chairs of the Writers’ Guild. I take that so seriously, and I am just daunted enough, that you can’t believe how good it feels to stand there with this Guild and to try stepping up to that exceptional team.

It was as I sat down today to write to you that the “I think we’re alone now” song, written by Ritchie Cordell and for me permanently linked to my then age-appropriate crush on Tiffany, popped into my head. But it popped in here not because of the alone part, but because of the we. That song is about sex and I am suddenly blushing as I look at you, but it’s about two people and they are alone together.

Anyway.

Writing is peculiar in that the deeper you can push inside of yourself, the more you can connect to other people. Usually the idea is that you’re doing this to write something that reaches people, but really always it’s about you as well as it is about them and it’s so great, so essential that we have each other.

Only connect, eh?