Writing and Marriage

 

Tabitha’s husband wrote short stories for men’s magazines. An unemployed teacher, hubby also collected rejection letters like failed-novelist merit badges. Then one day Tabitha found three crumpled pages for a discarded story. 

The tale of a teen girl with frightening abilities, the pages intrigued Tabitha. She pushed her husband to finish the story—with her insight to a teen girl’s perspective. There was so much potential there.

Hubby wasn’t so sure. Men’s magazines wouldn’t buy it. He finally had a full-time teaching position lined up and, if he was lucky, a summer gig doing driver’s ed that would give them some financial breathing room. There was no time for a novel.

Tabitha insisted. The story had caught her imagination. She knew other women would want to read it too. Another lean summer would be worth it…if hubby would just finish the book. 

He did, of course, finish the book and promptly sent it out and out and out. It seemed he might be 0 for 4 in the novel game.

Then a telegram arrived from Doubleday Press, (the phone had been disconnected because the teacher struggle is no joke). Hubby received an advance equal to 25-percent of his annual pay as a teacher. Oh, the book you ask? Carrie, (maybe you’ve heard of it). Within two years, the Kings—Tabitha and Stephen—where quite wealthy. 

However, if you buy the popular depictions, writers are hard drinking (drugging) misanthropes with loveless marriages and cyclical philandering. Thing is there is a thread of truth in that tacky cliché.

The oft-married, oft-divorced writer isn’t just a trope

Writers are not, by vocation, happy people. We dream of how the world should be even as we write (rail?) about how the world is. So, marriage is fraught with potential for deep dissatisfaction. But it is also subject to the writers’ insecurities and ego. 

Harlan Ellison was married five (5) times. Hemingway was married four times and Dorothy Parker three. There are myriad factors in those three examples, (mental illness, substance abuse, chronicle asshole syndrome). But central theme is the selfishness that is also necessary to shepherd creation to fruition.

Sacrifice your domestic happiness to your art…and other malpractice 

When I was a kid I aspired to write/draw comic books. A journalism major at the local university offered to mentor me out of the kindness of his heart. Truly. No smokeable involved. Aside from his disdain for what he called “mass-market trash,” I knew he had nothing to teach me when he stated with pride that he drank a pint of whiskey each day because “that’s what writers do.”

Like the alcoholic-writer trope, the love-crossed writer trope just as destructive and just as baseless to success.

“Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.” -Zadie Smith

But how much self-absorption is really necessary and how much is just a justification for shitty behavior? Please do note: I don’t judge how anyone feeds themselves. It is, however, worth mentioning that all four of Hemingway’s wives were from wealthy families which afford him freedom from actually holding a job or having to depend on the income of his books. Nor do I judge how someone produces their art. F. Scott Fitzgerald was better known for his short stories than his novels during his life. Mostly because those short stories was how Fitzgerald kept the cabinet stocked. 

I do judge how people treat other people and, here, I question of how much the writer sacrifices to art versus how much is sacrificed to ego.

Frank Herbert was unstinting in acknowledgment of how instrumental his wife, Beverly, was to his career. That’s not “you can do it!” support. It’s Beverly, teaching school full time while Frank sat at home and wrote. Without her financial devotion you do NOT get Dune or The White Plague, or any of Herbert’s other groundbreaking books. The Herberts were married for 38 years. One need only read Frank’s loving tribute to Beverly in Heretics of Dune to see their dedication to each other.

The choice is not always a choice

Doris Lessing divorced her first husband, left her two children with their father, and then left the country to pursue her career as a writer. Her decision is exceedingly selfish. I also encourage those who would damn her decision to read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. 

Happiness is subjective but it has nothing to do with successful publication

One-year-ago last month, my wife had an abnormal mammogram. We would subsequently learn that the lump was cancer. Gaye would ultimately fight through lumpectomy, radiation, and she continues to fight through a difficult recovery that includes a maintenance medication with side effects that mimic severe arthritis. 

Perspective

Now, the writing time that I don’t have doesn’t matter as much. I have a professional certification to achieve if I want to level up on the job, (and I do). Financial security is kind of a big deal. Then there are still appointments and bad days where an extra person is handy with clothes and meals or just a supportive shoulder. But mostly, there is a new premium on our time together. 

So, these days, I don’t worry as much about my burning need to write. Nor do I sweat publication. if I never publish a word of fiction, I’ll be okay. 

Purposes and desks

Stephen King has written about his skewed perspective. See, at the height of his success he bought a massive desk. He parked it in the middle of his “writing” room. No one—wife, kids—no one could disturb King while he wrote and drank and coked. It’s all probably an allegory for his ego. Those writer-types are so smart.

But King has also written at length of his wife’s unwavering support…even through the horrors of addiction. King’s upbringing, his deep sense of loss for an absentee father and tragically deceased mother, and the outrageous success tied to his books lead King to equally outrageous excesses. Tabitha staged an intervention and stood by him as he sought rehabilitation.

Once through his stint in rehab, King got rid of the hubris-sized desk and bought a desk just big enough for his desktop and to prop his feet on. He also pushed the desk against a wall and out of the center of the room. The “writing” room was returned to its original purpose of family room as opposed to an altar for his ego. 

Ultimately, writing should serve the writer, not the other way around. The writer’s life is not spent in service to writing. Writing is incidental to life. Writers, lawyers, accountants, all work is completely in service to life and those we share life with. Otherwise, what’s the point?

The photo at the top, "Carrie Promotional Poster," is the property of United Artists, et al. It is used here for instructional and educational purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.