NaNoWriMo – Day 10

Starting Word Count: 20491

Back to work and back to a limited number of words being written.  After this weekend’s marathon writing session, I’m not that upset about last night’s minimal achievement and, besides, I’m still on target to finish this year.

I’m going to forego my normal blog on writing today to write about partners of writers.  Not “writing partners,” but wives, husbands, significant others, best friends, supporters–whatever.

My wife is a wonderful and practical person.  Brilliant, funny and incredibly sweet, but I never really thought she got my writing obsession.  Last week, she asked me for my holiday and birthday list (my birthday is at the end of December.  Bottles of Jack Daniels are always welcome–FYI). One of the items I put on my list–more as a joke than anything else was, and I quote:

“A Place to Write.”

Now, we live in Boston which is a damn expensive city.  We have a lovely home, but it’s a small cape cod style.  Two bedrooms, about 1100 square feet of living space.  It’s cozy and comfortable and we love it.

But there isn’t a lot of room for my kids, who come visit quite often, or other guests who visit from time to time–My wife’s dad stays with us every summer, for example.  There certainly isn’t enough room for me to have a regular, quiet place to just write.  My point is, when I put on my list “a place to write,” I was being a bit facetious.

Writers are weird people.  We wander around most of the day in a world very different from normal people. We live our character’s emotions, we talk to ourselves and we throw keyboards around when we’ve written ourselves into corners.

Well, that last bit might just be me.

Anyway, my wife knows I struggle to get “into the zone” in our cozy, but very busy house–we also foster and house many cats.  Animal rescue is my wife’s passion.

Today, I got home and my wife pulled me into the basement.  Half bemused, half hoping for an interesting sexual experience, I followed. She then walked me through the design for my new library and writing space that she and a contractor had discussed today.

“It won’t be ready by your birthday, but it should be done by February,” she concluded.

“Um….what?” I asked her, wittily.

“Your library.  Your writing space.”

“I was kidding….” I started, still amazed.

“I know.  I’m building it for you anyway. You deal with my cat obsession, I can do this for you.”

I guess she gets me after all. I’m a pretty lucky guy. To my writing friends, go thank your partner today.  To the partners of my writing friends, Thank you for understanding our weirdness.

And to my wife:  I adore you.  Always have.