For the past week I’ve been telling myself I really need to write a post, but I somehow haven’t got round to it. Big April is all done now, and all of the big events that were worrying me were fabulously enjoyable and brilliant. And utterly exhausting.
Throughout I’ve been writing, recording then releasing a short story every week for the Split Worlds, working hard on the third book in the series (now about 13,000 words in and I really must start a new word count tracker) and spinning as many of my plates as possible.
Then today I realised I wasn’t here, talking to you guys, because I need cave time. I’ve been more sociable and “out there” in the last month than I have been in the last two years. It was great fun, but blimey, I need to recuperate.
Writers and the introvert thing
Two of the bigger events in April were practically back to back; I got home from Eastercon on Monday night and left for Alt.Fiction on Friday afternoon. I felt like I needed another three weeks to recover before leaving the cave again, and when I mentioned this feeling to some of my author friends, they all sympathised. It would be easy to put this down to us being the typical introvert; preferring time alone, inwardly focused, away from all the exhausting people. Whilst this may be true to a certain extent, I think this is over-simplistic (what a surprise) and as it’s been on my mind, I thought I’d burble about it here a little bit.
Sliding scales and questionnaires
I developed a distrust of this aspect of psychology when studying for my degree. So many tests to determine where someone falls on the introversion/extroversion scale depend on answering incredibly simple questions about generic social traits and situations, for example: “Would you describe your general temperament as quiet or outgoing?”
I filled in a lot of these questionnaires whilst studying the topic of individual differences, personality and questionnaire design, and the process destroyed almost all faith I had in the results they produced. Why? Because we can be different people in different situations, and these questionnaires – and the simplistic “I am more this kind of person than that kind of person” approach to personality categorisation seems to just gloss over this point.
Let’s look at that example question again, I would find that practically impossible to answer; there are several groups of people I know and sometimes socialise with. When I spend time with some I am very quiet and reserved, with others I am talkative and gregarious. With a few I am very outgoing, socially fearless and always happy, and if I’ve had a drink or three, I’m even cheerier.
I loved the socialising at Eastercon and Alt.Fiction; hours of chatting with people who are just as geeky and just as into books – and specifically SFF books – as me and they’re all lovely – what’s not to love? I felt relaxed and happy, does that make me an extrovert? On day three of Eastercon I had to just go to my room for a few hours and be by myself, does that make me an introvert?
So what exactly am I trying to say here?
This is far from a reasoned blog post (and I’m arguing with myself as I write it), I suppose what I’m trying to say is that whilst I do think there is a necessary leaning towards being an introvert when you’re a writer, it’s not the whole picture. Yes, a writer has to be able to spend hours and hours alone, and yes, things like book launches and signings can be incredibly stressful and draining, but that doesn’t mean we’re all the way down the far end of the introversion scale.
It may mean that we’re so keen on getting the stories and characters out of our heads we don’t mind being alone for a while, but love spending time with other people. It may mean that having to stand up in front of other people and say “I made this” after a lifetime of being bullied or criticised to within an inch of our id may be really hard.
What is really needed here?
I started this off by explaining that after all this outwardly focused stuff, I just want to be alone for a while, like a good little introvert who’s been pushed out of her comfort zone for a few weeks. It does feel a bit like that on the surface, but I’ve been missing hanging out with all my friends too. Having conversations by DM and text is not the same as being in a bar or watching Raiders of the Lost Ark at three in the morning in a freezing chalet in North Wales.
What I really think this is about is the need for mental space to grow book three and keep coming up with ideas for a new story per week. If I’m being out there, I’m not being in here, in my own space, letting my imagination tend the shoots from my creative mulch to grow into scenes and stories. That’s as important as actually getting the words down on the page, and critical for my wellbeing.
So, that’s where I am at the moment. You can read or listen to the Split Worlds stories here by the way, and even though I may not be in a bar near you, I’m never far from Twitter. I’d love to know what you guys think about this introversion/extroversion stuff too.
I know what you mean – I’d normally classify myself as an introvert, yet I stand up in front of 25+ 16-year-olds on a daily basis to try and get them enthusiastic about graphic design. There’s no room for introversion in teaching! That’s probably why I spend so many evenings by myself (or around family) – that many people during the day are draining and I need time to read and assimilate new things into my unconscious, ready to be spewed out as stories.
However I do think its a gross generalisation to assume writers MUST be introverted. I think we tend in that direction but look at Jackie Collins – I think you’d be hard pressed to consider her to be an introvert!
It seems that, as a profession or avocation, writing selects against really strong extroverts. Anyone who really needs to be around people a lot would find long hours alone with a word processor to be a grim, unsatisfying life. For the same reason, a really strong introvert would find a sales job pretty grinding after a while. People that fall in the middle of the spectrum can be more flexible, drawing on I and E as needed.
I’m certainly an introvert, in that I always need time to recover from active socializing. When I’m out with my “tribe”, I need less recovery than when I’m out with people I don’t know very well, or when I’m having to pretend to be an extrovert for one reason or another.
I definitely know that “third day” feeling. I used to go to a lot of scientific conferences and always had to hide out on the third day – no matter how much I was enjoying it. At a conference in Milan one year, I discovered the roof of the Duomo and sat up there for the whole third day – it’s my fondest memory of that conference
After a lifetime of working in teams, it was either take early retirement or go postal. Now I live on a mountaintop in Australia and life is one long sigh of relief. The downside is that it’s very hard to network in person any more. I went to meet my agent recently since she was at a con up this way. It was a four-and-a-half hour drive each way. I tried to form a writer’s group in the nearest town and (with the help of the library) found a handful of local writers within an hour’s drive, but we couldn’t winkle a single one of them out of their shells.
I used to write in cafes and public parks in my lunch breaks. Now I write outside, alone, surrounded by rock and forest and wildlife. I think my introversion has served me well and, to be honest, I’d rather have the solitude however hard that makes having a career as a writer.
I think it is an over-simplification as well. I despise those simplistic questionnaires which make everything black and white, when in reality we are all shades of grey.
I’m just as happy at home with my lap top, as I am out and about with people. When I tell people who have known me a long time, I’m actually very shy they scoff – but in a room full of people I don’t know, I find it incredibly difficult to strike up and hold conversation. I’m overtly self conscious and feel totally out of place. I’ve always said the most important element of a networking event is alcohol – I need it to break my ice.
I’m most at ease in my tribe. There I am loud, sometimes brash and quick to converse and debate. But I know it is also about stepping beyond the tribe at times. How do you meet new tribe members if you only hang in the known.
But I need my quiet, me time. I guess at the moment there is so much quiet alone time (the downside of working for yourself) – that I crave time out of the cave, around people, especially when they are like-minded book and publishing types.
I wonder though… being a writer is not like being totally alone… there are always the characters to play with on the page.
During the Long Form module of the Masters degree I’m half way thru, Farah Mendlesohn introduced us to the Myers-Briggs personality test, which includes the introvert/extrovert axis as one of four axes of traits. Now, I knew I was an introvert before I knew there was a word for it, but that variability of stimuli – different circumstances, different people, different Current Life Events – modifies my sociability a fair bit, as I suspect it does most people’s, and the Myers-Briggs system takes those complexities into account in a way that the simple I/E binary does not. Well worth checking out… and also a great way to think about the traits of your characters!
I’m so glad all your events went well! And you should definitly take the time you need to recharge.
As for the introvert/extrovert question…I’m a social introvert who’s fascinated by people and my husband is a quiet extrovert who prefers to hang a small, trusted group. The difference is, when I don’t get my quiet time, I get stressed and grumpy, whereas if he doesn’t get his social time, he gets lonely and unhappy. It all depends on where you get your energy, I think. If it comes from people time, you’re an extrovert. If it comes from alone time, you’re an introvert. At least that’s how I’ve always understood it.