First, I was going to put a funny marriage-based picture on here. I found that the majority of what I found revolved around men always being wrong, women always shopping, and men always being idiots. So, I’m not going to bother with a picture.
It was requested that I write about my wife or get her to do a guest blog. Personally, I find it uncomfortable to discuss the intricacies of my marriage. So, I’m going to do a humorous list of advice for spouses of authors. This has been done by other authors such as Robert Davis who wrote Rakasha.
- DO give your author the time to write. They get testy if you block them from their favorite activity.
- DON’T start talking to your author about the price of milk when they’re writing. They don’t care at that time.
- DO offer to read their finished work and give your opinion.
- DON’T offer to read their finished work and rewrite what they did. Unless you’re an editor this is not the reason you’re opinion was looked for.
- DO show some understanding that your author doesn’t really take weekends off. If the author is a stay-at-home then the weekend is the only time they have help with any kids, pets, or tasks.
- DON’T make it a habit of rushing out of the house Saturday morning while your author is in the bathroom. You can get away with this once or twice, but more than that and you might find that the character based on you has a run of bad luck.
- DO help designated some space in the house for your author. A desk or a corner to call their own does wonders.
- DON’T clear space for your author and slowly encroach on their territory. That’s just mean and you might find yourself ‘accidentally’ kicked out of bed every night.
- DO tell people your spouse is an author.
- DON’T tell people your spouse is trying to be an author.
- DO pay attention to where your author puts notebooks, pens, pencils, and other supplies.
- DON’T use up their last pencil, steal a piece of paper from their notebooks, or break their lucky stapler the one time they let you use it.
- DO show interest in how their published books are doing.
- DON’T constantly ask how their books are doing then nag them for spending so much time checking their stats.
Legends of Windemere 
Also consider that some writers (like myself) can become so absorbed in what they’re doing they will forget to eat and/or ignore hunger pains.
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I know . . . thanks for reminding me. Forgot lunch.
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Usually it is dinner that I forget. It’ll be 6pm, I realize I’m hunger, then I continue writing for another 15 minutes. The next time I look at the clock, it is 11pm.
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I have the toddler to remind me about dinner. Mostly by trying to feed me his milk.
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That’s cute.
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Enjoying the adorable toddler moments. I know a few more blinks and he’ll be a teenager that I want to throttle.
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Like Homer to Bart Simpson?
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Exactly.
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Great Post! Some I laughed at and some are very serious. I have an author friend who takes care of his 10 month old while trying to write. I don’t know how he does it. I think the “feed your author” is important. When I am on a roll writing, I forget to eat. I look at the clock and it’s 2pm and I never ate breakfast or lunch.
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I get that way at times. I guess the one benefit of being in a house full of distractions is I rarely get into that zone. I could do the writing when my son was an infant and less mobile. Nowadays, he’s all over the place.
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I cannot imagine what that must be like because I am one of those people who has to have silence. I can’t even write with music on. I was actually like that when I young also, so I can’t blame it on old age creeping up on me.
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I was lucky because silence meant people would either forget I was around or think I was up to something. If I had music on then people were less likely to mess with me. So, I wander around if I don’t have controllable noise while working. I’m still not able to work while people are talking or the toddler has been quiet for more than 5 minutes.
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I can certainly understand the quiet toddler danger.
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Thankfully, he’s not destructive. He just gets stuck under, in, or behind things.
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Great advices for me to keep in mind. May I complete your list? A mobile home in the car park – just in case 🙂
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I keep saying I need a cabin to escape to when I really want to work. 🙂
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Great advice, first hand experience I presume.. 🙂
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I plead the 5th. 😉
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Trying to be an author. Ouch! Better to have zero sales than to hear that from someone you love. 🙂
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I cringe whenever a family member says that. Happened yesterday actually. One person said ‘Charles is trying to be an author’ and another person had to yell ‘he is an author’.
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Very nice list!
And SO very true…
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Thanks. 🙂
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Hmm…
Well, if you swap most of those DOs and the DON’Ts around and you’ve basically got how the weeks run around here. Apart for #9 and, fortunately, I don’t use notebooks.
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Notebooks are one of my favorite things, but people seem to always mistake them for public use. Once I found a bunch of phone numbers written all over a character write up, which irked me.
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Lovely!
My parents use to hire a maid to clean our house once every 2 weeks and she would constantly throw away my writing, because it was often lists or scribbles on various papers. I lost years of my life stressing about this and also some good stories(joking, ofcourse I memorised them!).
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That’s terrible. I’ve gone berserk when stuff like that has happened to me. Mostly because I don’t memorize things too well. Bouncing from one idea to another makes things a little hazy.
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excellent, loved it, charles! been meaning to read this for ages and delightedi did. i have some additions but am not brave enough or stupid enough to suggest them in case our beloved spouses see them. sincere best wishes, sir 🙂
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Not sure if mine did, but I never heard anything.
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