My love of writing is turning me into an unsocial being. I am slowly growing to accept this, but what a dilemma!

On so many levels, we need to connect with the people and the world we live in, and yet, when the muse comes, we also need to be able to shut the world out, even to the point of missing precious time spent with our friends and loved ones.

Of course, if these relationships are solid, the support of our aspirations will be securely at our backs, but it is still a ruthless and yes, sometimes selfish line that writers must balance between the need for solitary writing time, and the need to feed the inspirational requirements to write something of truth and meaning.

And even when in the midst of a crowd, are we really ever in the moment? Or we are sponges, soaking up, what Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes as, the interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serving only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.

A favourite quote of mine comes from Maya Angelou: If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities…live in hope.

The image reproduced here is the copyright of Errol Farrell. 2012