The Work Is Solitary. Being an Artist Is Not.

Writing is often lonely.

There is no way around that.

Most of it happens at tables for one. On couches. In offices with doors closed. In coffee shops where you are technically surrounded by people but still sealed inside your own weather. Even when the room is full, the page only has one cursor.

That solitude is necessary.

But it is not the whole life.

The mistake is thinking that because writing is solitary, being an artist should be solitary too.

It should not.

Art happens when the private thing makes contact with other people.

A reader. A collaborator. A director. An actor. A cinematographer. A friend willing to tell you the second act does not work. A contest judge. A professor. An enemy looking for any excuse to rip the thing apart. A crew standing in a location you barely secured, trying to solve twelve problems before lunch.

The work begins alone.

It becomes itself with others.

That is difficult for me.

For a long time, I was guarded with my writing. I mostly let people who knew me and knew my life read it. Not because I only wanted praise, though I am human and praise is obviously preferable to being creatively disemboweled. I was guarded because the work was so close to the wound that I needed readers who understood the context.

But context can become a crutch.

A script cannot require a pre-read lecture about your biography.

A scene cannot depend on the audience knowing what really happened.

The work has to stand up in front of strangers.

That means I have to let strangers see it.

Competitions. Fellowships. Samples. Workshops. Table reads. Collaborations. The humiliating and necessary act of letting the work leave the house without a jacket.

This is part of growing up as an artist.

Not becoming less sensitive.

Becoming more durable.

I still want to get better. More concise. More specific. Better with dialogue. Better at writing the kind of line that feels truthful in the moment and inevitable in retrospect. Better at creating scenes that make a reader sit forward and an actor want the role and an editor someday say, “That belongs in the trailer.”

The only way to get there is to keep writing.

Then let the writing be tested.

Then write again.

I do not believe a degree, an accolade, or a finished draft marks the end of an education. If anything, every finished thing reveals the next weakness. Every script says, “Good. Now look what you still cannot do.”

That could be discouraging.

I find it strangely comforting.

It means there is always a next step.

My hope is to tell truthful stories about regular people, especially people from overlooked places, drawn together by the shared experience of grief, longing, humor, failure, and the stubborn need to keep going. I do not want to bring attention to myself so much as attention through myself, toward people and places that deserve more than caricature.

But I cannot do that alone forever.

I need collaborators currently known and unknown to me.

I need rooms I have not entered yet.

I need people who can do what I cannot.

I need to be useful to them too.

That is the bargain.

The solitary work prepares you for the communal one.

You sit alone with the page so that someday, if you are lucky, a dozen people can stand around a camera trying to make the page live.

That is the dream.

Not just to write.

To arrive.

And when we arrive, please store and put away all electronic devices, fold up the seatbacks in front of you, and prepare for whatever comes next.