Writer-Marriages

[rolanni]

Many thanks to everyone who offered congratulations on our anniversary. In view of our mutual promise of "twenty-four more," we celebrated by buying a stove. The appliance that came with the house has been for some time actively dangerous, and we'd been putting off buying a new one until various tangles got un-. However, it transpires that Home Despot was offering a sizable discount and no payments/no interest until January 2006, so our new stove will be arriving on the 17th, assuming we can get the propane company motivated to come out and unhook the old one.

On the question of writer-marriages. Yesterday, msagara said, "Given that I'm a writer, I've always admired writer-marriages; I'm not sure I could keep one together..."

Now, it happens that I have a very difficult time imagining being married to someone who wasn't a writer. Back before the rocks cooled, I dated non-writers, and the degree with which they mostly Didn't Get the whole writing thing sooner or later came to be a large problem in the relationship (this can also, of course, be written as "...the degree to which I mostly Didn't Get the whole not-being-a-writer thing..." *g*). kinzel's first wife -- a non-writer, but otherwise a perfectly nice woman, and a great reader -- absolutely failed to understand the writing thing, though I believe she wished to be supportive.

So, those writers who are married to folks who aren't writers -- how do you keep the marriage working, and the lines of communication open, given the weirdnesses of creativity?

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

*eyes typos in her original message ruefully* And that after having come from a two hour session of revision. I hope I was more attentive to the manuscript than I was to my comment. o_O

I now grok the weird creativity thing. My parents were nowhere near so oppressive, though they made it clear to me when I was young that they expected me to get a "real job" that could put "bread on the table."

After I graduated from college and they finally read some of what I was working on and looked at my art, they came back to me and said, "We were wrong. This is what you should be doing, and we hope you get to do it for a living." One of the nicest moments ever. :)


Lists are KING. I don't know what I'd do with lists, signs, and lists of lists. And signs pointing to other signs. And calendars, and notepads and post-its....