Should I just walk out of here?

[Rayray118]

Okay, long story short I'm a writer who's been offered the exclusive use of a friends apartment abroad so I could spend two weeks writing. I dived on it of course. I've just begun a major project and will be enormously busy with my day job (I have one of those unfortunately!) for the rest of the spring and summer. Aside from weekends this is the only chunk of time I have to focus on this and if I don't get a decent 20,000 words written in these two weeks there's just no point in my being here.

20,000 words is easy going for two weeks and I left it at that as a plan because I wanted to spend a night or two at the weekends with my friend who owns the apartment. She lives about twenty minutes drive from here and lets out this apartment in short lets most of the year but of course in January it's quiet. I had expected, and made very clear, that I need solitude to write. I arrived here on Friday and so far solitude has been no part of this experience.

My friend stayed here Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. I really wasn't expecting her to stay last night and thought that was pushing it, so I reminded her that as I'd said I need solitude to write. She seemed rather shocked and appalled when I suggested that she come back next weekend and leave me on my own till then. This morning she came up with some bizarre excuse about needing to stay tonight also. To me it's just getting ridiculous at this stage. To clarify, she is not lonely, nor is there any other reason I can see why she'd be so inconsiderate. She knows exactly what I came here to do and why it's so important that I be left alone to do it. She lives twenty minutes away in a very large comfortable home with her husband. She is also in a very happy and loving marriage. It seems to me she's just wilfully oblivious to how important it is to me to be alone to undertake this task, however clear I was about it before I arrived.

I can imagine some people may think I've little to worry about but if I don't get this done in the next ten days I won't get it done before late summer. I am wondering to myself if I should just pack my bags and rent an Air BnB somewhere else while I've still got ten days left? I don't want to do anything to damage my friendship but I cannot say how important or irreplaceable this time is to me. I am also getting increasingly frustrated, another few days and I'll be extremely resentful - honestly this about the most boundary-less behaviour I've experienced in a long time!

Any opinions would be most welcome.

OP, you mention your friend lives abroad, near the apartment you're staying in. Could this be a cultural misunderstanding? Maybe she really doesn't understand how much time you need to be alone.

The apartment was only of value to you when it was going to be a place where you could be totally alone and get done what you have to. So if she's there all the time, it's pointless.

Say to her that you're really sorry but you can't socialise as need to get on with your work - this isn't a holiday, this is two weeks of work. If she can't understand that then it's also pointless having her as a close friend.

If she doesn't give you your space, then just leave.

I feel sorry for the friend
She has given you a free place to stay and enjoys your company
No idea why you have not been straight with her so far though.

@Snog 😂😂😂 can you not read?

@Snog Is your post a reverse?

@Snog Are you on fecking glue?

This thread got me thinking about the zone and the need for quiet. I'm an introvert and need lots of down time.

I'm not a writer but as an English teacher do a shitload (technical term) of reading. If I'm reading and assessing short-answer responses I quite like background stuff, and will often put on a film I know well as a kind of white noise. It's not tick and flick but responses are likely to be within a limited range.

For more complex writing, e.g. drafts, responses to texts, responses to texts about texts I not only need silence, but the zone, which in my case is narrow one. This means getting up very early to assess so my mood is fairly neutral, i.e. too early for anything to have affected my attitude and make my assessments too biased. Happily I wake up very early by nature. I would be so pissed off to have anyone interfere with this. Fortunately, when my DD lived and at home and my late DH was alive, they were all tucked up in bed.

So much sympathy for the put upon OP.

Absolutely just get an air bnb. It's annoying because it's not what was arranged but it's really the easiest/simplest option at this point. It's the only way you can be certain that you will get the peace that you need to write. You can't really demand that she leave her own apartment, and even if you do there's no guarantee that she wouldn't come back. Continue to stay at your friend's apartment at your own peril.

I hope you get your writing done!

I sympathize, OP. It’s probably a bit late now, but if you had excused yourself and put on industrial ear protectors it might have induced her to leave. It’s what I do when I have tax forms to fill in and the children are pestering.

I remember being driven to near-weeping frustration by my late DFiL who had no clue - none - what I meant when I said that I was working on a book to a deadline on the computer in the corner of the sitting room 15 odd years ago. No tablets then, and for intellectual property reasons I couldn't use the work laptop.

DH had been great at taking three teenagers out and giving me chunks of time, but even he couldn't shut FiL up. I could screen conversation out but he kept trying to draw me in and asking me to look things up or write them down. I swear he thought I was playing games on there.

The book got written in the end and I kept my manners. He was visiting uninvited from the far side of the world and stayed for weeks through critical deadlines. I was working a 37.5 contract (read 50-60 actual hpw!) so coped by getting up at 5am to put a couple of hours in every morning while he slept. I found I could edit and talk OK, just not write and talk. 🥺

@NearlyGranny what book did you write?

@Rayray118 If your friend isn’t listening to what you are saying about needing solitude I would leave. Even if she now pledged to give you space you’ll worry she’ll be about to return. Good luck on the book!

Fellow writer here, I find people just don’t get the solitude to write thing.

I imagine she’s lonely and enjoys your company.

It’s her apartment so you can’t really ask her to leave. Can you not shut yourself in your room and tell her you need to write X no words a day so you’ll come out when you’ve achieved that?

Maybe she’s had a row with her husband or fancies a quiet break from family life as well.

This post does remind me of how difficult it can be to carve out solo time for creative pursuits. For many people, it’s just not possible to get long stretches of uninterrupted time alone. You need to either be financially independent or have very understanding family and friends to facilitate the solitary time in many cases. I’m envious of this lucky enough to have that and also feel the grr for people like you OP who only get very few precious chunks of time each year. Can totally see why it’s maddening, I hope you found somewhere peaceful to go for the rest of your time.

Hoping the Great Escape goes successfully OP!

I know you’re doing it for work, but I have to say that two weeks of solitude for any reason sounds like absolute bliss to me. Some people are horrified at the idea of anyone being this isolated though. Before DD, if DH would go away for a weekend I’d get really excited about some alone time. However PIL would be so worried about me being on my own they would make plans to spend the whole weekend with me while he was away! I just don’t think extroverts can get their heads around anyone being alone for a long period of time without feeling lonely.

Anyway, hope you can escape quickly and easily and get back to focusing on your writing. Agree with others that if you stay your concentration will be impacted by just the possibility that she could turn up at any time.

My experience of this kind of thing is that, unless other people do a similar kind of thing writing, academic work, poetry they have no real idea of what is meant by solitude and think that bothering you every half hour to chat, to offer tea, to update you on the random thoughts that are passing through their mind is a kind of friendly kindness. It seems not to matter how clearly or thoroughly you explain what you need -- the words seem to mean something different to them.

I'm sending this to my husband!

If he threatens to 'work from home' on a day I take off for writing there is hell to pay!

My mum is a writer too, and she helps me evacuate my dad if I go up to use their second home for writing.

WOW - Well I hope she either fucked off when you told her to or you've managed to escape now.
She will definitely get the message when you leave!

I think you're being a little bit harsh OP.

It sounds like you're getting the apartment for free and your friend probably just assumed that part of the reason you were staying was to see her. She probably thought solitude to write was more of a 9-5 Monday-Friday thing. She was wrong obviously, but it was a misunderstanding not a deliberate affront. If you're going to accept free accommodation I think you have to realise it comes with strings.

But the friend isn't even leaving OP 9-5! And OP was very clear to her before she took up the offer, and also again the other night, exactly what she needed. The friend has totally ignored it and carried on, as if she knows better than OP, what OP needs.

That's completely unacceptable.

Does your friend have much of a social circle in this country? Is she lonely? Maybe she has missed you and got really excited at the idea of being able to spend time with you. When a friend visits from abroad and asks to stay in a property that you own, you normally expect to spend a considerable amount of time with them, so the whole set up has maybe caused crossed wires.

When a friend visits from abroad and asks to stay in a property that you own, you normally expect to spend a considerable amount of time with them, so the whole set up has maybe caused crossed wire

Read the OP's OP.

The friend offered it, the OP didn't ask.

The OP made it clear she needed solitude.

Isn't the notion of the solitary writer fairly well embedded in popular culture and understanding? Frankly it's the first stereotypical image that comes to mind when I think of 'writer'. Someone sitting alone at a desk for hours (not necessarily productively) and going for long, solitary walks. I find it really surprising if people lack that idea, even if they don't understand exactly why solitude is needed.

More prosaically, one explanation that comes to mind when thinking of writing as similar to studying, writing a dissertation etc, is that most people's experience of studenthood is of having a lot of free time and not doing much work. Your friend may be trying to create some halcyon days of studenthood with you.

People fail to think through the facts; that having a job, children, a partner etc leave you with very little discretionary leisure time into which to squeeze your studying / writing, so that all of it is 'focused work time' and every last minute is accounted for and desperately required, to get the task done to an acceptable standard.

They just think 'study time', 'oh, that used to mean I'd see my friends, go out for the afternoon, then cram something (often of poor quality) in at night / do the work the next day / stay up all night the night before the deadline, instead'. So they treat your 'study time' as a bit of a joke, forgetting that you have DCs' homework to oversee that evening, you're at work the next day and, given general child-induced sleep-deprivation, all-nighters are no longer compatible with brain function.

The OP mentions flights so presumably has travelled some distance to use the flat. Sounds as though her friend can't understand why the OP would choose to do that and not spend time with her.

Well I hope you have made your escape OP, and will have a productive remainder to your 2 weeks off.

What’s she been doing during the day? Has she literally been there the whole time?