The writer as introvert -- or extrovert?

Whenever I've taken one of those Meyer-Briggs-type personality tests, the results have been consistent. I seem to have equally strong needs for stimulation from social interaction and from solitude. My two careers -- librarian and professor -- have met those needs beautifully. There was ample opportunity for reflection and the solitary activities of reading and writing and also for the ferment of classroom discussions, conference attendance, and rewarding relationships with students and colleagues.

So this past month and a half has been an interesting one for me, being much more heavily weighted to the introverted side of life. I've been home and except for a few diversionary activities which I have dutifully recorded here, I have severely limited my face-to-face social interactions in order to write. And it's been good.

However, I had the opportunity this past Monday to spend the whole day with a group of bright, engaged librarians from Philadelphia. I was facilitating a planning process for a Pennsylvania Library Association Committee that is charged with implementing the association's flagship initiative related to early learning. The discussion was both focused and wide-ranging, as the best conversations often are. As usual, I learned a lot about what was going on out there on the front lines of public library service and about myself. What I learned about Pennsylvania public libraries will find its way into the Book, I am sure. And what I relearned about myself is that I can't write in a vacuum. Sometimes I need to get out and mix it up a bit with my colleagues who are doing the work in libraries in order to prime my pump. So all of those good, reflective librarians out there are also part of this writer's community, along with my writing friends and those implied readers who are always with me.

I'll be going to Quebec tomorrow to spend nine days at the IFLA Conference, where I expect that my interactions with children's librarians from all over the world will stimulate more thinking and help to drive the global perspective which is the underpinning for much of the Book. I'll bring my computer and try to find time for introspection as well as socializing.