AUTHOR'S CORNER

THE TRUTH ABOUT LIVING WITH A WRITER

Have you ever wondered how wonderful the lives of those who live with writers must be?  To live with such a lovely, poetic, insightful and artistically inclined person, being showered with words of sheer poetry and mentally caressed with the deep insightful, meaningful view on life that only a writer can possess!  Nights spent round the fireplace with favourite tipple in hand, long walks in the country hand in hand whilst your 'writer' verbally puts the world to rights.  Romance (and who better to understand romance?) by the bucket loads in the form of rose petals upon bedspreads, candles instead of light bulb, sandal wood scented baths prepared for two in which you will languish with your 'writer' partner.  Sounds great right?  Sounds like heaven, correct?  Only in a book!

The truth about 'us' writers is rather more bland and starkly boring!  Where as we certainly bring blank pages to life and indulge in all sorts of fantasy and unspoken, if not unheard  of in some cases, human behaviour!  where as in our books we have the ability to whisk up feelings of lust and desire in the almost dead to the world variety of humans; in reality we hardly know where to begin.  Bear in mind, a fictional character is a much easier, less challenging person for a writer to tackle, (at least a fictional character will do exactly what the writer tells him and will never judge the writer) and is less messier than dealing with a real life human!  

Then there is of course, as most spouses of writers will tell you, the mood swings!  We are temperamental creatures who tend to feel sudden failure and despair for no rhyme or reason!  Our ability to stay happy is a very tiny window of opportunity, depending on how many cups of coffee we have managed to consume, how the weather is, how our creative juices are flowing and whether we have woken up with a positive belief in ourselves!  If all the above correspond harmoniously at the precise moment the earth aligns perfectly with all the planets and the sun glows a deep red, (get the picture?) then we will be happy for the remainder of that day!  And of course, let's not forget the 'I am a failure' syndrome which every single writer, by nature of their insightful minds, goes through!  Where there is a need there is a niche!  We write fantastic, heroic, adventurous, romantic things because in reality....and here it is people, in reality we don't actually do all those things!  It is make believe!! 

And let us not forget the famous writer's block!  It is the curse of all aspiring writers, where only a few days ago your juices are flowing and everything is going smoothly, suddenly, you dry up!  Drying up is not an easy process and can take days if not weeks to pass, meanwhile, the poor spouse will get the full brunt of anger from the 'writer' and in that time will be blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong in their lives!  A writer's marriage is always tinkering on divorce, mainly thought of and threatened by the writer!

And then last, and this is the biggest strain on any relationship, the writer's insistence of cornering and making their partner sit for hours listening to some extract of their novel, whilst attempting to correct, criticise, berate and argue (with no help from their partner) with themselves at how bad their own work is!  Dare you as the spouse find fault in their work.....dare you?  Really?