I found this paragraph on Stephen Fry’s blog today…

Some people can write with ease in whatever circumstances they find themselves. Up a tree, on a bus, in a log cabin, a steamy-windowed café or a tropical beach. Some don’t mind noise, distraction or a broken up day. I, unhappily, am not made of this material. I need peace, absolute peace, an empty diary and zero distraction. I enter a kind of writing purdah, an eremitical seclusion in which there is just me, a keyboard and abundant cups of coffee, all in a room whose curtains have been drawn against the light. I would have added tobacco as a constant and necessary companion, but I stopped smoking some two and half years ago, so no longer will there be the pleasure of having a pipe clamped between the teeth as I grope for the Flaubertian mot juste.

This is just how I feel when I write code. Especially interesting code. Its why I sometimes disappear and don’t reply to people for weeks. I need the solitude and I revel in it!

And this quote lower down (in the same post) is even better:

“Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.” 
–Paul Tilich

Do you sometimes feel the same way? What triggers it?