Flying Solo

(This essay was originally written several years ago for Futures magazine, and it garnered me a Pushcart Literary nomination...so I thought I'd share to see if it resonates with you writers out there.)

Humans are supposed to be herd animals, creatures of the pack. Even only children like myself are raised in a family setting. We attend school in groups and if you’re a young female, you learn to go to the bathroom in groups. We have our cliques, our club memberships, our teams and our carpools.

Then a few strange ones suddenly veer off the crowded path, find their trembling wings and start flying solo. As writers. As one-woman private investigative agencies.

Ah, you say. Now I know where she’s going with this. Good, if you do. If you don’t, sit back, grab a beer and get ready for some free-fall soul searching.

Has it yet occurred to you that one of the reasons you’re a writer is that you’re very comfortable being alone?

Not every one can do this. Most people -- and I like e.e. cummings’ phraseology on this -- “Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than the squarerootofminusone.” If you don’t believe me try going to any well-populated social gathering. A clearance sale at K-Mart will do. Tell the multitudes that you’re a writer and once they finishing ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the fame they associate with the profession, they will inevitably ask how you do it. How do you sit there, hands on the keyboard, staring at a blank computer screen, or blank piece of paper, and get your ideas. Your characters. Your action. All by yourself.


And that’s the kicker. All by yourself. No boss breathing down your neck. No supervisor clucking her tongue at your tardiness. No taskmaster with a whip, other than your own self.
And then you try to explain that you’re really not alone, that there are about a hundred or so people who live inside your head, all with stories to tell, all clamoring for your attention.

And these people, these nice employed-in-big-nine-to-five-offices people began to back away from you. Slowly.

Been there?

Fifteen years ago when I started my investigative agency I figured I’d have two or three others on staff. All male. Reverse chauvinism. And they had to be good looking (they all were). But I found, and it wasn’t due to the distraction of being surrounded by hunks, that I got just as much work accomplished by myself.

So for the last few years I worked as I investigator I was flying solo, and it may come as no surprise to you writers that the majority of private investigators do the same.

We have our heads full of people, too. Slimy people, wacky people, tricky people, lost people.
I worked a lot of cases by marching these people out onto my mind’s stage and running them through their paces. I tripped up slime because in my mind I wore their skins. I found the lost because in my mind I wore their walking shoes. I out-thought the con artists because in my mind we donned the same thinking caps.

My days often went like this: I’d sit in the attorney’s office after delivering my report and he’d look at me from across his polished mahogany desk, praising my work.

“So. How many investigators did you put on this guy’s tail?” While he questioned me I knew that outside his office door are no less than two secretaries, a receptionist and four junior partners in his law firm.

“None. Just me,” I ‘d tell him.

“Just you?” he’d asked, as if being only five feet tall even further reduces my abilities.

“Yeah. Just me.”

“Then how did you figure out so quickly what this guy was up to?” The attorney knew he couldn’t even produce a simple transmittal letter without getting at least three other people involved.

“Easy,” I’d tell him. “Around two in the morning, after I’ve beaten the case file and all the accumulated data to death, I pour myself a goblet of Opus One. Then I pace the kitchen in the dark and become your adversary. I think his thoughts, feel his fears, absorb his desperation.”

At this point the attorney would inevitably glance at his watch, make a remark about his busy day and full schedule of appointments, and if I wouldn’t mind showing myself out....?

Yeah, I think me, myself and I can handle that.

Gentle readers, gentle writers, you and I fly solo. There is something in our nature that requires us to pull away from the ‘madding crowd’ and hover, to observe and record.

But not in a crowd at the zoo or a class trip to the museum, where other fingers point out the sights and others opinions fill our ears. But on our own, either as the advance scout or the straggler. So we see what others would have trampled on, hear what others would have lost in the din.

We saw heroes in the stars long before anyone told us what the constellations were supposed to mean. And we still see castles in the clouds when most other people only see a seventy per cent chance of precipitation.

One of my greatest thrills when I had my private pilot’s license was to fly directly into any cloud castle I wanted to. It would blanket my small plane, obscuring the windows and then suddenly I was out the other side, and the whole horizon looked brighter, more vivid with color. Pilots called it cloud punching.

I think of that blankness sometimes when I sit and stare at the white screen on my computer, knowing the words that I type suddenly make it come alive with color. With voices. With characters.

Which brings me back to my original question. Has it yet occurred to you that one of the reasons you are a writer is that you are very comfortable being alone?

Now do you know why?

Happy cloud punching.


Namaste, ~Linnea
http://www.linneasinclair.com