You have to hide your marriage certificate because no paper is sacred when an idea hits.
You wake up in the middle of the night to find him writing by the light of your child’s digital thermometer.
He tells you he had a dream that there was someone living in the boiler trying to get out and after you don’t sleep for the third night in a row, he says “Oh good that’s just the type of effect I was trying to achieve”
Your next door neighbour says “Oh I could have been a poet, but I didn’t know it”
You find V5 pens in your babies change bag. A Moleskein notebook. And a dog eared copy of Kaplan’s Rewriting.
People ask what you do and when you tell them they nod and smile politely, when they find out what your husband does they start pulling manuscripts out of their bags. Even the old ladies, (especially the old ladies).
Every pen in the house is accounted for and you would rather write in blood than touch them.
People think you live in a Garret.
You think we haven’t seen so and so in a long time and then remember he’s actually a character in your husband’s last novel.
Your house is filled with books and they have all been read.
You watch a film together and within the first five minutes he has analysed the characters motivation and broken down the plot. It doesn’t annoy you, you do it yourself now.
You absentmindedly find yourself on the internet checking to see if www.writerswidows.com is available.
You visit the bookstore and move his books to the front of the shelf.
The above is written by my wife, Carol, who took time out from her busy business, Dormouse and the Teapot, to write this for the Carnival. I think it sums up what it is like to live with me and has not been edited or changed by me in anyway (though I did have that itch as a writer, cream doesn’t clear it up). I’d appreciate fellow writers and poets asking their partners to add to this in the comments, is this a universal thing?
Andrew Oldham's Boneyard 