On Being Interrupted While Writing
by Evan Shultz
To write is to be interrupted. Not just to be interrupted, to ask for it. As soon as you sit down to write, you will become acutely aware of every little distraction. Your word processor takes too long to boot up. The music from the apartment building across the street is too loud. There are cars outside, people outside, making too much noise. It is too hot, or too cold. It is too temperate, and you feel too much like taking a walk outside.
No, not all of it is in your head. Rest assured, a lot of it is real, and the timing is truly uncanny. Nature abhors a vacuum and a writer at work. The roommate who never says anything to you will one day, out of the blue, start telling you an interesting story about their day. And it will happen halfway through a crucial paragraph. It always does. Often it happens twice, or three times, as the story suddenly reminds him of something else. The interruptions will be spaced about one sentence of writing apart, so that you will spend a good forty-five minutes trying to collect enough of your thoughts to finish the paragraph. It’s not like you could politely ask him to shut up—to do so would be rude, no matter how you phrased it. You feel rude just thinking it.
If there’s no roommate around, the phone will ring. If you have unplugged your phone, someone will knock on the door.
And if no one knocks on the door, then you are out of luck.
Without an external distraction, even an imaginary one, you will have to face the internal distractions unarmed. Despair will point out what a lousy writer you are, then give examples, with footnotes. Anxiety will remind you about those unpaid bills, or those friends you never called back. Guilt will chastise you for not writing sooner, and ask you what right you have to return to your desk without first making restitution. Just think: If God didn’t send you that suddenly loquacious roommate to jolt you out of yourself and annoy you into starting afresh, you would have had to face those three inner voices alone.
Better to have a woodpecker for a roommate than your own psyche.
