I was watching an early episode of "Grey's Anatomy" yesterday. It was probably the third time I'd seen that episode. This time, something struck me and it wasn't something that someone would have to watch the show to understand. It was something I've slowly been acknowledging and that finally reared its head and stared at me as I watched the fake TV interns bond and share each other's joy and sadness: Writing is a lonely life.

I'm an as-yet unpublished writer. I've been writing all my life but have only taken it seriously for the past couple of years. I write now with a vengeance. I write with passion. It's become who I am. When I'm not writing, it doesn't take much to get me thinking about my next story, novel, project. Most often, it's a song on the radio that triggers something in my mind. That's my secret as a writer. Everything I write has been set to a soundtrack in my mind. I hear a song and it can do anything from inspire a mood to define a character.

But how do you explain that to someone who doesn't understand why it is that I'd rather sit in front of my computer making up people, worlds, and situations instead of socializing? I've tried. It's hard to explain. It's harder to explain why, occasionally, I'll be in a store with a non-writer friend and a song will play and I'll freeze, suddenly lost in a world that is only real on the page where I've created it.

These same friends smile at me as I daydream, shaking their heads a little and dismissing it as part of my quirkiness. They tell me that I'm a creative person; I guess I never think of it that way. It's inherent to me to listen to an explanation or an answer and then ask "but what if…?"  I like to make things up. I'm only a liar on the page. I try to be honest in real life, often to the point of being a little too blunt without intending to be.

As an author, my characters are the lifeblood of my writing. Without making them flesh and blood in my mind, I cannot write. I cannot tell their stories. Sometimes it alarms me a little that when I sit down at my computer because I start typing and I don't know what I'm going to say. Yet the words flow and my characters take over. This is hard to explain to anyone who doesn't write. The words "weird" and "odd" get shrugged around. I've grown used to it.

I don't know many other writers. I haven't had much luck in writing groups. I've had some bad luck there and have left the group wondering why I seem to be the only one who's actually writing instead of creating an outline. Maybe it's because I haven't found any fiction writers. Most of the groups I've gone to consisted of literary types who are aiming for the New Yorker. I've been told that my stories are well written but they're just… not meaningful. There's not enough symbolism or layers. When I try to explain that I just want people to be entertained by what I write, they get a look in their eyes. It makes me feel like a Jane Austen character who's accidentally wandered into a high society function when I really belong in the kitchen.

That's not to say I don't admire literary authors. I do, as long as they can write. I don't dismiss the idea that maybe someday I'll wake up and decide that I want to write my own Leaves of Grass. Yet, at this juncture in my life, I can appreciate those literary books but would much rather bury myself in the latest Harry Potter novel or grab the latest Neil Gaiman book and gobble it up.

I have a day job. What struggling writer doesn't? I have coworkers that I like. I don't hate my job. If I were most other people, I'd be happy there because it's a job that can go places, let me move up, train me to have a function in life. Yet I don't want this function because I already have one. I am a writer and unless I can receive a paycheck from writing, I don't think I'll ever feel quite fulfilled professionally.

Those interns on "Grey's Anatomy" might not be real and they might be a little luckier in the bedroom than most doctors. Yet doctors, whether real or fake, have a path in front of them that they follow. They have a set amount of years at school, an internship, a residency, and then they're doctors. We writers don't have that. We can choose school or we can just write. We can call ourselves writers but there's no professional title that will designate us as such. We don't have that team of interns around us to serve in the trenches with us who understand what we're going through. If we're lucky, we might have a few other writers we can talk to but the pain of being rejected, of being frustrated, of being blocked is our own, individual in its own level of misery and intensity. In the end, it comes down to the same thing: We write alone. Only we can form the words and the worlds that become our literary efforts. We can share them with others, even co-write but the words that pour forth from our unique minds are our own and they put forth a world of our own, somewhere only we, the writers, know.

It's a lonely life but I wouldn't give it up for anything. Not even for the soap-opera life of a "Grey's Anatomy" intern.

Samantha Clements loves to write and does so avidly. She's recently begun the hard task of sending out her work in attempts to see it published. She has finished several novels and just realized that it's probably time to think about trying to get an agent, a thought which terrifies her. She's a little clueless about how to meet other writers as well as a little worried in case they say mean things. She also watches too much "Grey's Anatomy."

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