The Loneliness of the Long Distance Writer
I think something about writers that most people wouldn't realize is how it calls for so much time spent sifting through the past. Even the recent past has a charge, and a melancholy separation. Here I am writing about what happened in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago and it is so much more immediate to me than to anyone else who shared it; they've moved on and I'm here grubbing through the ashes. Of course, I imagine the writers would argue that the grubbing is what makes life worthwhile, or gives it an added patina of meaning, anyway.