Wednesday, November 20, 2019

The Perils of Having a Writing Wife


by Janis Patterson

I married late, well after my writing career was started, so The Husband knew exactly what he was getting. Sort of.

A down-to-earth and sublimely practical man of science well into a long and honorable military career, he knew I was a writer of fiction. He also knew that writers were thought to be eccentric. He just didn’t know how much.

Luckily he is a courageous and adaptable man, for as our marriage progressed, he learned more than I think he ever wanted to know about the unknown side of writing.

For example, he will leave in the morning after kissing a pajama-clad me in my office, already sitting eye-to-eye with the computer. He will come home some eight or nine hours later to find a pajama-clad me in my office, exhausted and emotional, sitting eye-to-eye with the computer. The laundry is undone, the bed unmade, dinner is a frozen lump still in the freezer, and I will look up in surprise, asking if he didn’t leave just a little while ago.

He has gotten used to me murmuring the name of my hero (or villain) in my sleep without wondering about the possibility of infidelity.

He has finally learned to accept that when I am asked what I do, I smile sweetly, give the questioner my best grandmotherly twinkle and say in soft, mellifluous tones, “I kill people.”

He no longer becomes alarmed when he finds books on poisons larded among my cookbooks.

He has become accustomed to my handing out business cards (with my websites only – no phone or address) prodigiously and has even learned to carry a few of them in his wallet. Apparently being married to a multi-published novelist carries a certain cachet.

I’m glad, because on retrospect I’m not sure writing is a lifestyle I would have chosen. I believe that almost anyone can write, given enough time, training and work, but that writers cannot help but write – it is an inescapable part of them, like some sort of birth defect. He has learned that when I stop in mid-word, my face goes blank and my eyes focus on some distant point that I am not having a fit, merely an idea. This is usually followed by a frantic scribbling on anything around, from a cocktail napkin to the back of my hand. He realized early on that I carried enormous purses not for make-up or other feminine junk, but to accommodate my tiny notebook computer, which he called my ‘purse computer.’ Now that my uncertain back has put paid to large purses, he never sees me without a pen and scratch pad – and usually a few choice (and unacceptable) words, because I loathe having to handwrite anything.

Unfortunately, the creation of worlds and populations on little more than caffeine and imagination can be an unsettling process for a non-writer. Currently I am working on a book set in contemporary Egypt – yes, yet another one. One of the side effects is a profusion of photographs of obscure archaeological sites blooming all over my office. Another is that our dinner menu has suddenly leaned heavily towards kushari, kibbe, hummus and tabouli. Luckily The Husband is as big an Egyptophile as I (doesn’t everyone know by now that he proposed to me in Egypt?) and he takes this with equanimity.

I’m not always that lucky. While writing Dark Music before my marriage, I lived in an apartment. The hero was a concert pianist who specialized in Chopin. I played Chopin almost 24/7 for the three months it took to write the novel. Though I tried to be quiet and respectful, before long my neighbors were begging to know when I would finish the book.

When I was writing The Hollow House, a cozy mystery set in 1919, I pestered The Husband about WWI and suitable firearms. Being something of a WWI/WWII historian, he happily complied.

He was less happy when, at a very crowded local gun show, we saw an automatic M96 Mauser Pistol Rifle, the firearm I had decided on for my villain to use. It’s a very distinctive and rather rare piece. I pointed it out gleefully and said to The Husband, “Look, darling, isn’t that what I used to kill Jake?” The gun show might have been packed, but suddenly there wasn’t a single person within arm’s length of me for a long time.

Due to several ancient accidents, I sometimes have a slight limp, especially when I’m tired. In Exercise is Murder, the heroine has a severe limp, though hers was caused much more dramatically by a bullet wound. As my tattered and beloved sweatshirt says, “It’s All Research.” The Husband has become accustomed to my asking all kinds of sometimes bizarre questions wherever we go.

I’d like to say I’m strong-minded enough to keep control of my characters, to keep them on the page instead of letting them seep into my life, but I’m not. As every character, good and bad, shares at least a few aspects of its creator, so does the creator reflect – at least temporarily – a modicum of the character. We create our characters from the inside out, and I believe Loucard’s Principle, that when two things touch, there is inevitable transfer from each to the other, however small. 

I realized that The Husband has not only learned but accepted this, for when I am in full damn-the-torpedoes-and-write-mode, so submerged in the story that I never get out of my pajamas and we survive on take-out suppers, he has developed the habit of peering around my office door and asking, “And who are we today?”

Maybe he’s lucky. He remains faithful, but still gets to live with a wide variety of women, all in one package.  He married a writer.

9 comments:

Marilyn Meredith a.k.a. F. M. Meredith said...

Oh, I loved this. You are very different than I am. I always get dressed first thing in the a.m., always have and always will. My husband was good about being my companion for years at all kinds of writers conferences and conventions including Left Coast Crime and Bouchercon, they were our vacations. Still writing, but no longer traveling.

Clamo88 said...

I thoroughly enjoyed this and do suffer from the not getting dressed for hours syndrome. I throw on some comfy clothes, grab my coffee, and head for the computer before the sun has risen. Surprise, it's suddenly 1 or 2 PM. Those who live with us either suffer silently or join our dementia at various stages.

JeanL said...

I read this to my husband, and he said, he was used to the dragons hanging around the house, at least they use to local landfill for their bathroom and not our yard...(fantasy writers have their little problems too).

Sharon Ervin said...

Loved this. One other mention: Husband Bill is offended when I am "in the zone" at my computer and he sneezes or coughs in the hallway and I react badly. He didn't understand for a long time that we writers live in two venues, the here-and-now and...other places, and can occupy only one of them at a time.

Jacqueline Seewald said...

A great post! Writing works best when the husband has his own career, leaves the house, and lets you work in your zone. Of course, when you're both retired, it doesn't always happen that ideal way.

Diana Stout said...

What a fantastic post. I could so relate. It was as if you'd been peering in my window from time to time, your descriptions so apt. Living with a writer is filled with adventures!

Morgan Mandel said...

I haven't been writing as often lately, even though I'm retired, so hubby doesn't have to worry about it stealing my time. Strange how I find so many things that need to be done that keep me from writing I think when I had a day job I ignored a lot at home and actually concentrated more on my writing. Probably the work ethic was still enforced in my mind and I had more discipline then!

Roman Empire Mystery Lover said...

I am a writer like Janis. I write in my pajamas, sit in front of the computer as soon as I've made a pot of coffee and cleaned up last night's supper dishes. Why waste the time getting dressed in the morning and undressed in the evening, to say nothing of the extra laundry all that entails? I do not end the writing day, however, until I've written my way out of a corner or at least have a plan to do so. In that way, I look forward to picking up where I left off and moving forward. June Trop

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