Functionally Alone: What I Keep Writing and Why

A Self-Autopsy of Recurring Theme

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

I haven’t been writing for a long time. It feels like a long time. But the reality is that it’s not really that long. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been applying the lessons I’ve learned with regard to developmental editing and theme analysis, more so to see if I can pick up anything of note about my own writing journey.

I have uncovered something unexpected initially, but sitting with it makes complete sense in retrospect.

All my characters are alone.

---

alone

adjective, adverb

without any other people

---

I don’t think I’ve been doing this long enough to separate myself from the writing. Not in the standard sense that every character I bring to life is me, but a lot of what fuels and drives the work I produce is tied to my lived experience and then abstracted (what feels appropriate).

My style has been described as detached and also driven by a body-first perspective. That is reflective of how I move through life, I suppose. I’ve written about it in length elsewhere, and it’s not the point of this essay, but anhedonia and the management of it is the closest I have to trying to understand this.

So that begs the question. Why are my characters alone even when surrounded by others?

Because I am.

And I don’t think I know how to write a character that instantly belongs to a group because I don’t know how to do that without it being transactional, be it through work, a shared hobby or something, anything else. I have always been the newest person at the respective table and had to integrate myself; I’ve never been the core of something.

Let’s approach this in chronological order. All characters are linked to their publications for those interested.

Tamsin is fun. I actually submitted a polished (what I thought was polished) to a publication over Christmas. But functionally, she is alone for the entirety of the piece. The concept was inspired heavily by Disco Elysium, which, if you haven’t played it, you are a detective and elements of your psyche talk at/to/with you. I was curious to see if I could at least attempt to recreate it. I had also just finished Edgerunners. So the inspiration is pretty clear.

I almost didn’t want to include this one, given that the focal point of the piece is about Shiver, then Tamsin, but the complete absence of anyone else that may or may not be real is an interesting foundation to me. The very first piece of creative writing I shared is about a woman alone in a snowstorm fucked off her face, having a ‘moment’ with what may be a very vivid hallucination and a significant intrusive thought problem.

Sound familiar?

Meriel was my first attempt at something actually structured, which never really got off the ground because of reasons. I think the cart was put FAR ahead of the horse conceptually; however, for a standalone piece, writing and re-reading it, there is a similar theme presenting itself.

Meriel, like Tamsin, is alone. Even more, given the lack of intrusive thoughts. However, and critically, there is no feeling of isolation. There’s no ‘I’m alone and sad’ vibes with the piece at all, just a probable witch making something probably magical whilst snacking on candied orange peel and bribing a cat that may or may not be hers. Meriel is good at what she does, and conceptually, at least, was a more ideal version of my own attempt at being a witch and making things from nature. In London. With zero nature.

Out of everyone I’ve written about, Meriel is probably the closest I’ve come to an idealised version of self. Calm, in control, good at what she does, has a cat, has minimal anxiety about life, and is capable of enjoying things. The list goes on. But on reflection, there is no rumination or even thoughts spared for other people or the lack of.

Unlike Meriel, I mildly obsess over it, because I know if left completely to my own devices, I’ll likely be entirely too comfortable with my own company until I’ve decided it’s too late and I might as well commit to the isolation hermit thing and break down into tears until I get dragged to a pub and feel better about everything.

Corinne E. Wyatt is, by virtue of having 5 pieces behind her name, my most prolific character. However, I think critically, at least she is likely the least explored in a traditional sense. I am very much playing in someone else’s sandbox (Alexis Kennedy), so a lot of the exposition effort I can hand-wave away.

Corinne takes what made Meriel work, competent, independent and just runs away with it. I love writing Corinne (which I haven’t in a while, to be fair). I feel like I get away with so much just by virtue of her own zero fucks given attitude to anyone else’s feelings.

Yet despite her actually having engagement with another character to me, she feels the most isolated out of everyone we’ve explored so far. To those who haven’t clicked (and that’s fine, no obligation to), these very, very short pieces are led by the letter of the day, almost always Corinne just being arch and a bit extra (especially with regards to tea and smoking) and then a close third section of her interacting with the world she exists in. Normally, in a stately room, being moody and magnetic.

Unlike Tamsin and Meriel, Corinne is not what I would call a likeable character. She’s a bit of a bitch, far too smart for her own good (and knows it) and is aware she is likely indispensable for the work she’s doing. But there’s something so…engaging to me writing her, and the feedback for her presence has almost everyone (bar me) agreeing she has probably killed/kidnapped several people for whatever reason she deems appropriate. Including one fascinating speculation that she was involved in the disappearance of an artist who went missing a few years before Corinne was even born. But apparently time and space mean nothing to an Occultist in 1920’s Somerset.

I think the nature of Corinne’s relationships being entirely transactional within the piece makes this hit me a bit harder. Tamsin was alone, and chaotic Meriel was alone and content. Corinne is almost performative (I think that’s the best way to put it), given that she is literally writing letters and given the words she’s choosing, it’s clearly for effect. Despite the occasional bouts of warmth towards Blackwood, the entire premise is that this relationship is a working relationship; they are almost always talking about work.

This is the purest distillation of what I touched on above. I don’t know how to exist as someone who belongs without it feeling transactional, and Corinne is this. Literally. I think she also exists as a vehicle of permission. To be sharp. To not care about being liked. To be comfortable with distance. Corinne’s alone is chosen and almost weaponised. She is the most damaged out of everyone we’ve seen so far. I’ll drop a quote to highlight this.

“I caught myself looking out at the sea this morning. Towards France. Where the air once turned to aspic and I broke before I hit the ground.”

There’s an honesty with Corinne that does leave me slightly unsettled. That if I really wanted to lean into these aspects of myself, it could work. I could simply just not give a shit and be this. Someone who is completely in control of their life and better for it.

Emma is the least alone conventionally. The piece is driven almost entirely by dialogue and conversation. I didn’t think any of it at the time, but I spent the most time with Emma going through it line by line. The decision to have the entire piece be rendered through a radio ties to a preference of mine, to be together but separate. When I go on holiday with other people, I have a habit of planting myself within general proximity of others but being completely in my own little bubble, be it reading, doomscrolling or just blissing out to music and whatever the ambience is. To me, it’s the highest level of comfort to be in that state. It feels right, especially if you’ve got the people who just get it.

Unlike the other three. Emma is running away from something; she’s chosen this state, but it’s clear that she isn’t perhaps as comfortable in this state of alone as the others are. She had something which isn’t there any more, and she has chosen to essentially go to the other side of the world in order to work through her many issues. I am proud of this piece. I feel that a lot of what’s in this work is the earliest indication of my style and voice really starting to be noticeable. The writing is (in my opinion) tighter, the themes are clearer, and the dialogue is doing work. I’d spent months by this point doing the development editing, and I was a bit disillusioned by the speaking in complete sentences approach, so I decided to fully lean into my fragmented run-on style of writing and just make it work. I think I did.

There’s a feeling of exile running through Emma’s piece. It’s an interesting piece to sit with, given my own history with withdrawal on a social level. I’ve outlined it directly in the relevant essay, but there was a period not so long ago that, due to my own anhedonia, social interactions became almost intolerable because I was sitting there, intellectually aware that I was ‘having fun’ and was forcing myself to go through the motions whilst just getting more and more tired of existing. So I obviously just started not doing it, or leaving early/arriving late. Saving energy and myself. There’s also a direct rendering of an intrusive memory, which I get; it feels more than most people, but I think it’s probably just the normal amount. (hopefully) And that was hard to write, not even the nature of the thought itself (which does make me want to cry every time I read it), but just how it slid in.

Emma is hard for me to reread closely because, unlike the others. There are cracks to this, Emma reaches out. Tamsin talks to herself, Meriel to her cat. Corinne writes letters which are really just performances. Emma genuinely reaches out and means it. And I know exactly how much that costs because I know what it’s like to have someone offer something easy and gentle and feel your whole chest tighten around whether or not to let it in.

Jonathan is abstracted and rightfully so. However. He is alone in a life surrounded by people. Clare, Lilly, Dr Kaplan. Helmand. In terms of actual prose, his world is the most populated. This was a technical piece for me. I had no idea how it was going to end up when I started. I was just blasting Jonny Sniper for hours and seeing where my mind went with it. I didn’t want to render in thoughts and experiences I didn’t have lived experience in, and considering the nature of the piece, I felt that was highly disrespectful. I leaned hard on the lyrics for this.

I stare at the Blackbird passage. Jonathan’s answer to a safe place. A bird. Not his daughter’s face, not Clare. But a bird, busy with its own little life, just flies away and is just a bird flying away. Nothing figurative. No metaphor, no simile. Just motion.

But. It’s the easiest form of relationship, really, isn’t it? One that asks nothing of you. One that doesn’t care if you are broken, standing in the rain or on a rooftop staring down the scope with your finger tightening on the trigger.

Sunday (Unpublished) Jess ‘Sunday’ Steiger. This is a VERY early stage concept and ideation; however, I wanted to include her in this because, yes, she’s alone, it’s chosen rather than inflicted. There’s a sense of blasé about it; it’s almost incidental. She has a team of coworkers, who are all here to work. Yet, she fell asleep on an alien planet without meaning to. She just stopped wherever she was, and that’s ok.

I can’t really explore this too much, given the early stages of concept work, and I haven’t had enough time to flesh out Sunday more than this very limited sample.

But similar to Meriel, there is a contentedness to Sunday’s state of being alone here. She’s comfortable, she’s working, she’s good at what she does (why else would she be on an alien planet in a professional sense), she’s got Corinne’s brilliance in her field. But a curiosity without the damage or rumination of Corinne.

Sunday is what aloneness just is. Without it being a wound, a weapon or a coping mechanism. It’s making space for noticing the world around you.

The Unnamed Woman #spoilers This is the latest piece, I think there’s a lot of growth here in terms of quality and content (might be me being quietly smug), but I think this is where everything cracks open. This is the first time someone has been let in. The threshold is crossed, and much like real life, which for all of that anxiety and worry. It turns out to be fine.

The Woman is broken, alone, isolated, the only thing she has is herself. Unlike Emma, who reached out and was offered something. The Woman is let in, literally. Completely and without question. This piece offers a counter to my own thesis. I don’t know how to write belonging that isn’t transactional. There is nothing transactional about this. This Woman can’t even say her own name, and Frey makes it okay. Nothing but bring her in.

I think, and this is a virtue of the platform and the support I’ve received with the work I’m doing, most of it involves varying levels of vulnerability, and it’s been welcomed. My own insecurities about belonging have been challenged by strangers.

I think there is also one more final element with The Woman. Unlike everyone else, she has nothing. Tamsin has her augments and chaos, Meriel has her craft, Corinne has her own brilliance and weaponised distance, Emma has a radio that lets her exist without being present, and Sunday has her professionalism when she’s not sleeping on a beach. Even Jonathan has his discipline.

The Woman has nothing left. She’s beyond the point of being able to stand; she manages three words, and she gets bought in anyway.

---

I started this wanting to understand why all my characters are alone. I think I understand it. What I didn’t expect was to write someone who couldn’t manage it anymore. The Woman shows up with nothing; no name, no competence to hide behind, no carefully maintained distance. She barely gets a sentence out, and they take her in anyway.

I’d like to say that means something has shifted. That I’ve figured something out. But I think the more honest answer is that I wrote a character who needed to be let in because I needed to see what that looked like. Whether I believe it’s something I’m allowed is a different question.

I’m working on it.