The tension

“I believe – I know – that writers need solitude, and seek alienation of a kind every day of their working lives (And remember, they are not even aware when and when not they are working…)
Powers of observation heightened beyond the normal imply extraordinary disinvolvement; or rather the double process, excessive preoccupation and identification with the lives of others, and at the same time a monstrous detachment. For identification brings the superficial loyalties (that is, to the self) of concealment and privacy, while detachment brings the harsher fidelities (to the truth about the self) of revealment and exposure. The tension between standing apart and being fully involved, that is what makes a writer. That is where we begin…As unconscious eternal eavesdroppers and observers, snoopers, nothing that is human is alien to the imagination and the particular intuition to which it is a trance-like state of entry…A writer sees your life as you do not…"

(Nadine Gordimer & tip of the hat to Sabine)