Sharing spouse/s.o. and writing time

Oh, sorry. I saw the thread title and thought it was an advert for a wife-swapping co-author deal...
But seriously, my wife and I have always had our own interests--she is fond of watching very long movies in a language I don't understand. Also, we have been together 14 years now. I find that when we do watch something together usually one of us will fall asleep. Ah, romance!

My hubby doesn't seem to mind when I'm writing, as long as I spend some time with him and am able to keep up with other things outside of writing.

Do you spend more time on the computer than with her? Do you neglect household chores?

If you're willing to get up at 4 am to write for your two hours, does she still have a problem with it? If she does, you need to talk with her and tell her that writing is important to you and that you won't neglect her just because you write.

And just because you have never been published is no reason to quit. Some writers don't get published until way late in life. If you enjoy it, tell her it's a hobby and you do it for fun. At least she'll be off your back.

The best person to talk about this with is with your wife. She needs to know your passion, why you have it and make sure you pen in some time just for her, just as you pen in time for writing.

BenMears said:

Oh, sorry. I saw the thread title and thought it was an advert for a wife-swapping co-author deal...
But seriously, my wife and I have always had our own interests--she is fond of watching very long movies in a language I don't understand. Also, we have been together 14 years now. I find that when we do watch something together usually one of us will fall asleep. Ah, romance!

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Hehe. Sounds like my house, Ben. 19 years in August and I still run into her in a room or two.

As to the question, it was a gradual thing for me. I wasn't really serious about writing when we were going out, so it was a little harder springing this insanity on her. But, we both love reading, so there was an understanding of the final product there, at least. We worked things out. Sometimes I sacrificed, sometimes she did. The best thing I ever did was involve her. I taught her how to be a first reader and she read all my work before anyone else did. I talked out plots and characters with her. For the convention thing, I actually took her to a local one. She never asked to go to another one, no matter how far away it was.

If your wife really balks at 2 hours a day, tell her you're taking up golf and you'll be gone for 7 hours at a stretch 2 or 3 times a week. She won't mind the writing so much after you grudgingly give in, I'll bet.

Luckily both my wife and I are writers, so we've worked out a fairly good system. She generally writes from 0530-0730 since she gets up to feed the cats then. In general, I write from 2130 to 2330. This gives us time after work to destress, have dinner, help the kidling with homework/watch TV/whatever before I have to sit down to write.

It's all a matter of working out compromises. Like when I had to do some serious writing to meet a deadline. She had to put her writing on hold for a bit to catch up on all the initial edits (she edits my stuff, I edit hers). So, I tried to make certain to do something nice for her afterwards as well as running interference so she could get some quality writing time in after she finished the edits.

It's still tough sometimes when she wants to do something or I do and we can get resentful if we feel the other isn't being supportive. Luckily, we've always been able to take a time out and talk it out before things got too stressed.

I think being able to talk about it together helped the most though, esp. before she started writing also.

You'd be amazed how many divorces you see between the second and third books, when it becomes obvious to the spouse that this isn't just a passing fancy: It's a full-time job with weird hours, low pay, and odd stresses.

You know how a lot of writers have "rituals" that get them into the mode of writing? Like putting on certain music, eating an apple, or going to a specific room ...

For me, it's when my husband plays XBox. I hear the dialogue coming from the TV room, look over and see his Jedi defend himself against the evil Empire, and for some reason I get into the zone. I'm ready to plunge into my novel.

He knows this, and -- oh what a sacrifice -- he has agreed to play XBox every night from 10pm to midnight (at least) so that I can get my words down for the day.

What a giving man. Ahem.

hpoppink said:

For me, it's when my husband plays XBox. I hear the dialogue coming from the TV room, look over and see his Jedi defend himself against the evil Empire, and for some reason I get into the zone. I'm ready to plunge into my novel.

He knows this, and -- oh what a sacrifice -- he has agreed to play XBox every night from 10pm to midnight (at least) so that I can get my words down for the day.

What a giving man. Ahem.

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Wow! Nothing like taking one for the team!

My husband recently got into writing, and I recently got into acting. {his thing} We are currently acting in the same show, and he is writing a novel that is a parallel to mine.

A bit off topic, but we just came back from seeing Who's Afraid of Virginia. Both couples were played by actual married couples! Can you imagine what hell that must have been?

My significant other has now weathered the writing of three novels with me. I sprang it on him rather suddenly after we moved in together, when I had to let him see how I lived outside of him. He was curious, a little miffed now and then when I preferred my cold hard screen to his warm embrace, but has never really complained except for the occasional "Are you going to sit in front of the computer all night again?" He's not a writer or even a reader, so I feel pretty grateful for his overall sensitivity to my writer's quirks. We each have our own interests, to be sure, and even though I sometimes feel I'm neglecting him, he seems to understand it's something I need to do.

Spouse

Let's see, I've been married twenty-five and a half years, so I should know what a spouse is. I know I have one. I saw her just a few months back. At least, I think it was her. Nah, maybe not. I'm pretty sure the woman I married had beautiful auburn hair with a red cast to it when the sun hit it. But this woman's hair was mostly gray.

Seriously, I don't know what the answer is because it isn't a problem I've ever faced. I have my life, my wife has her life, and we have our life. I don't complain when she's out living her life, she doesn't complain when I spend a week or four somewhere else writing, or when I'm home but miss meals and converstaion for a week or two because I'm so busy.

But I also kiss her when we pass, talk to her when there's opportunity, go out for a quiet meal now and then, take a picnic basket to the park on Sunday afternoon, and bring her a cup of warm milk every night at bedtime. So when we are together, it's Good.

There must be balance, but that balance must include writing time. In teh end, however, I guess it mostly comes down to whether or not you're the right two people for teh life you both want to live.

My husband and I have been married 12 1/2 years. When we were first married, I wrote quite a bit and he complained. A lot. All the time. That stress gave me about 9 years of writer's block. Now that I'm back into it, and writing WAY more than I did back then, he has no idea why I'm doing it but fully supports my right to, to the extent of chasing people away when I'm "in the zone." He does periodically kvetch about my monopolizing the computer, though.

If she's sleeping while you're writing, why does it bother her? That's silly.

I've been married five years. Both my husband and I work full-time jobs, and then we have the important stuff. My important stuff is writing, his is engineering model aircraft, building, flying and sometimes selling his designs.

We both respect what's important to the other, and things work out fine. Many days we don't share meals, or watch TV or movies, or any of that other couple stuff--but that's okay, because we understand each other.

Interestingly, your problem is a common one among my husband's friends--substitute writing for flying. Most weekends there are at least five weird airplane enthusiasts in my garage almost all day, and the ones whose wives have interests outside of their marriage are the ones who get to stay and play. The guys whose wives have nothing of their own to do get resentful of the time their husbands spend on airplanes, call constantly, show up at my front door mad, etc.

Help your wife find something of her own to do and she won't be as resentful of the time you spend on what's important to you. Helping with the housework regularly will help, too. Nothing irks me faster than having to give up writing time to pick up my husband's mess that he can't be bothered to do himself because he's flying.

Setting aside agreed-upon blocks of time for your wife might help, too.

There are generally assumptions people make when they get married that should have been worked out before marriage. But the reality is that few people do work out details such as one plans to move to New York within two years, and never mentioned it. And the other lived in New York, and hated it so bad, they said they'd never go back.

On first glance, it may seem "My wife is being a wet blanket, since she doesn't support my dreams?"

If you were a famous writer, with a six or seven figure income, she'd support your habbit. The questions that need to be asked are practical. 1) Do you make enough money to support a family? Is your writing preventing you from getting a job that will help you support your family?

If you've worked as a writer, and you are between jobs, then that's a different issue, because you've proven you can support yourself and your family. But if you've never made an income, and you are just planning to hit the writer's lottery, and expect your wife to wait around until you do, then you are being unrealistic.

Never give up on your dream, but you have to put your dreams in perspective, and make priorities. Vince Lombardi was a successful pro football coach. He had a list, and somewhat demanded his players adhere to it (this was in the sixties) God, family, football, in that order. Obvious today, people would look at that and you'd have the ACLU at his doorsteps.

However, if you look at the concept, generally a person has to make a priorities list. In my mind, if wife and children are down around numbers 3 and 4, there will be problems in the relationship.

It's not the words you say, "I love you...yes, I'm commited to you..." that matter. It's the actions that confirm those words. "Yes, you are number one in my life, but my mother comes first," won't cut it. If you say you love your wife more than your mother, and your boat, and the guys, but you spend fifteen minutes with your wife, and eighty hours with the boat, your mother and the guys, your words mean nothing.

So, question one. Have you taken care of the practical end of being a husband, which includes helping put bread on the table, or do you expect your wife to hold down jobs while you work on the computer? If you have a great job, and this is a dream, then you can work out a compromise.

Two, how much time do you spend with your wife? Does she get quality time or left-overs, when you are tired and exhausted. If you are working a full time job, and a great bread-winner, and you are spending 4 hours a day on the computer, then again, your wife will feel cheated, because your actions say, "Take a back seat, this is more important."

Hey, this may seem old school, but love is a sacrifice.

So, I guess I'm saying, we don't have enough information to answer your question, whether its you, or your wife, or both that have unreasonable expectations? But my long answer will give you a clue where this is going.

My husband and I have been together for 11 years, married for the past six. We have three kids, two cars, and a mortgage. We also have hobbies that we do on our own, without the other person. I love him to death, and he still makes my heart leap when he enters a room, but I don't want to do the same stuff as him 24/7.

He's always been terribly supportive of me as a writer, and frequently tells me, "You better work on some of those manuscripts so you can sell one soon." He works nights, so a lot of times once the kids are in bed -- around 930 or so -- I get my writing time in between ten and midnight. On days when he's home, we spend time together doing family things, but I still make time to write while he's doing something else (for example, right now he's taking a nap).

The trick is to find a happy balance. A.Rex, you said you were recently married. I think as time goes on she may become a bit more understanding, but a lot of newlyweds (particularly young ones) have a hard time grasping that the new spouse has interests that don't revolve around "Yay I'm Married Let's be Together All The TIIIIMMMMEE." Maybe she has a hobby or interest keeps her busy -- could you time your writing so that you're working while she's at the gym or scrapbooking or whatver it is she does?

If she doesn't have any hobbies, she needs to find some. Just because people are married doesn't mean they can't be individuals as well. It IS kind of weird that she's bothered by you writing while she's asleep, but maybe she's still in the honeymoon phase -- or maybe she's mad that you aren't. Anyway, I hope you two are able to find a happy medium. Talk to her, and see if you can work out a compromise.

It does help if you both have hobbies. I like writing best when my husband is playing one of a million videogames. I know he's a) not going to distract me and b) not going to get bored and/or feel abandoned.

A.REX said:

Guess, ya'll have got it easy & that's cool... my time will come I guess.

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It's not that we have it easy. It's that we compromised and made our situations work for us. A lot of people forget that there are two individual people in a marriage, and you have to be happy with yourself to be happy in a marriage.

A.REX said:

Guess, ya'll have got it easy & that's cool... my time will come I guess.

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It's not so much that we have it easy. It's more that we've taken the time -- and it DOES take some time -- to find a compromise that works for everyone. My husband doesn't complain when I spend hours on the computer writing, and I try not to whine if he spends an entire weekend in the woods hunting.

He and I are two halves of a whole, but we are still who we are, and being married didn't magickally make us change our hobbies or interests. It just made us learn how to be less selfish and more compromising.

If you're working all day, and then writing after dinner, maybe she's mad because she sees that as HER time with you being infringed upon. What about setting up a schedule? Sounds goofy, but it may work. "Okay, honey, after dinner, we'll hang out and do whatever you want until nine. Then at 9:00, you can go watch <insert spouse's favorite tv show here>, and I'll type until 11:30, and then we can go to bed. Together."

Seriously, communication is a key thing here. If you don't talk to her about it, she's just going to stew and become REALLY pissed.

My wife understands that i'm trying to find my niche, write my best-seller someday or the screenplay of a lifetime. Normally I don't work on my writing when she's awake, only at night. Sometimes though I'll work a bit here and there while she's watching t.v. We have an understanding which is nice.

My wife is suportive of my writing, particularly if I do it before she wakes up. If it interferes with weekend or evening plans, it can be a bit of a problem. I've tried to overcome that by getting her interested in writing. I tried my hand at a mystery novel because that's what she likes to read. We talked plot and characters together although she has no interest in writing fiction herself. That didn't work, unfortunately, because mystery novels can't sustain my interest.

I've lately been trying to persuade her to write a memoir about the period surrounding the fall of Ceausescu and the opening of the Iron Curtain. She's Romanian and has incredible tales about the fall of communism and the sudden inflow of western culture. Social movements from disco to punk to hippies sprouted simultaneously as half-kilometer line-ups for bread ended. Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Holly were contemporaries in the early 1990s here, between coal mining riots. I'm still hoping to persuade her to write it all down, in hopes she'll catch the writing bug too.

And then there's my daughter. Unless a book has a fuzzy animal pop out or a build in ``twinkle, twinkle little star'' soundtrack, she just ain't interested. I guess I'll wait until her second birthday before loaning her my ratty copy of ``Crime and Punishment.'' She loves the taste of bookmarks though. That's encouraging.

Adam

Hmm. A lot of the posts here reveal really nice relationships. I'll give you some hope, even if your relationship goes south. Way south.

My wife did Patti's quote: "Yay I'm Married Let's be Together All The TIIIIMMMMEE." Actually, at the very start of our relationship, it was fine because we were both into writing. But then I got into computers, and that was evil, selfish, "guy-thing" time that my wife hated. It got worse when we had kids. To avoid the grief, I started staying up late to do work after everyone was asleep. Some nights, too late. She'd be up in the morning getting the kids ready for school, and I'd be in bed with a pillow over my head, grumbling about the noise.

Oh, she didn't like that.

Anyway, about 3 years ago we had a head-on collision. Full-out warfare. We had marriage counseling, we were near divorce, I hated being around, she thought I was a bum. A bum with a really high income, but a bum nonetheless. (In fact, someone earlier in the thread said that if you have 6- or 7-figure income, the spouse gets really supportive all of the sudden. I'll testify that my wife didn't give a damn. She wanted to kick my a$$ and there weren't enough dollar bills on Earth to pad my butt enough.)

Anyway, in the end, many things resolved. She started going out some nights sort of in revenge, but was surprised to find me supportive. I think that helped her to see that maybe it's OK for a husband and wife to have outside interests. Then also, I got an office. A little $300/month hole in a wall. But what's important is that I go to "work at the office" and it sounds right to her. And I'm not around the house (a visual reminder to her that my attention is elsewhere).

Also, in the counseling, I just flat-out said that I wouldn't give up my creative time for the marriage. That was really harsh, I felt horrible saying it, but it wasn't a bluff. Once my wife saw that this was a part of me that was going to exist until the day I died, she somehow made peace with it. I think she had assumed it was something she could "fix" about me.

But probably the biggest help was that I took over the mornings. I get the kids up, get them to school, and then go to a real job or my office, depending upon the day. That one thing made her feel like I was really participating in the relationship -- much more than taking her to the movies or taking her on a surprise vacation.

Our relationship has been really good since then. We got married at 20, and will celebrate our 14th anniversary in 2 weeks.

So my advice to you is as follows. If something is negotiable, don't hide it out of selfishness or laziness. Be willing to give it up or do what is asked. If something is not negotiable, don't hide it to prolong the marriage. Get it out there and get ready to deal with the consequences. Wherever you can make a concession, make it. Wherever you feel put-out, state it. Whenever you feel pushed too hard, negotiate a fair amount of space for yourself. Don't take advantage. Don't be guilt-tripped.

-Tony

I do the bulk of my writing in 1 hour slots: lunchbreak at work, or while Mrs Zornhau watches CSI or ER.

My advice is

• trim the crud from your life (trash TV, boring friends) before you compromise your relationship
• establish regular writing slots matching sig other's regular activities
• get some external validation to justify your obsession - e.g. short story in print etc

I just got married in November. He knew from the time we met I was writing a novel. On the date where we started getting serious, I ventured to show him some of the short stories I had written. Before we were living together, I got up at 5, exercised till six, wrote till seven, the got ready for work by eight. He’s very supportive of my writing, and encourages me often. But I am the wife, the new wife, in the honeymoon stage. I put my writing on the back burner during the transitional engagement/wedding planning/moving stage. I used to live five minutes from work. Now I live 30 minutes from work, we only have one car, and he has to be at work an hour and a half before me. I write better in the morning, and want to spend evenings with him. I started staying up with him, sleeping in, and making excuses for why I couldn’t write because I wasn’t at home. (Duh, a pad of paper and a pen!) He didn’t do that, I did. He says, “You need to write.” But I felt guilty going to bed an hour or two before him so I could get up to write at dawn. When I told him this, he told me how much he loves me. He assured me it was okay. We have dinner together and spend the evening together, then he puts me to bed, (Literally) while he stays up doing his thing. That way, we both have quality time to ourselves, and quality time together. I have also found that he likes to go out with his buddy on Saturdays mornings. Hello, WRITING TIME!!! We found a way together to have our interests, and my interests and his. The key is mutual support. I am getting over the "Yay I'm Married Let's be Together All The TIIIIMMMMEE." As Patti said.

I would say to AREX, as important as writing is, your wife needs to come first. Conversely, she needs to put you first. She may be feeling that you think writing is more important to you than she is. Listen to aboyd and Nateskate, especially.

My wife has always been supportive of my writing. My career choice on the other hand, well, that's a different story. (though I had already been doing it for four years when I met her)

Brady H.