It's within human nature to, once started on something, try and get it to work. Anyone with a computer knows this. Cleaning one's apartment, organizing stuff, one knows it. Anyone in a relationship knows it.

There is a tendency in gay people to be artistic. They know something about themselves and their sexuality which sets them apart. The force of the inner knowledge of being gay is not unlike the understanding an artistic person has within them that makes choosing to be an artist a healthy thing. Hemingway didn't decide to be a writer; he simply knew he was one all along. It wasn't even a choice. In a way it's quite similar to the core understanding the Buddhists knock about: thou art that which is, and vice versa.

(Maybe it comes as no surprise that people take an artist for being 'different/gay.' But that isn't what the artist is really about. Granted, nothing is easy if one is poor, except, one supposes, love.)

So, along comes the self-understanding that is writing. Along comes the work habits, just as Hemingway often wrote about his work rhythms. It comes as no surprise that in studying people and life he explored the nature of creative habits, writing, for instance in the morning, stopping when it was still going along, then putting it down, not thinking about it anymore, letting 'the well replenish itself,' for the next day. Having a drink seemed to be a way of unwinding for him.

Does the writer's work then exist outside of society, a disinterested study that yet is natural for the human being to engage in?

It can sound like a juvenile discussion if one isn't careful.