The phrase "awkward distance" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a physical or emotional space that feels uncomfortable or strained between people or objects.
Example: "During the conversation, there was an awkward distance between them that made it hard to connect."
Alternatives: "uncomfortable gap" or "strained space".
Seated at an awkward distance from each other at a table in the second, they were vague.
An awkward distance to his right, and slightly behind him on the otherwise empty tarmac, stood a less composed-looking figure.
Most choose to write in the formal written language — a medium that gives them access to any educated Arab reader from Morocco to the Persian Gulf, but creates an awkward distance from the language of ordinary life.
And while the track round the pitch may have put awkward distance between the spectators and the action, it somehow served only to highlight the other-worldliness of your team actually playing there.
It has also opened up an awkward distance between Mr. Romney and some top Republicans in his native state who insist that the $80 billion assistance plan completed by the Obama administration, expanding on steps taken by President George W. Bush, was the only viable path to save the carmakers from ruin.
(One thinks of the beer garden scene in the film version of "Cabaret".) There is, for the most part, an awkward distance between performers and their roles here that never matches Peter's second-act declaration that "we were so poor, we let ourselves get drunk on him".
All year, they have been confronted with this ritual: a disquieting report, a blizzard of questions, an awkward distancing that often neither condones the behavior nor condemns the administration that propagated it.
We need people to engage with bicycles, buses, streetcars, trains, and their own feet, to look at ways they can get places without fossil fuel, or instead using technologies that minimize the impact of our fossil fuel usage – or consider living where they don't need to go awkward distances often.
The rest of the metropolitan region wound up in the awkward middle distance, popping into the frame sometimes, but not with the frequency or fine detail that our readers deserved.
Subjects in the awkward middle distance -- call it Region -- pop into the frame sometimes, but not with the frequency or fine detail that the closest, most engaged viewers (you, in other words) might hope for.
He's trying to pursue a clearly doomed film project, through excruciatingly awkward long-distance conversations with an agent.
