I have no idea how many Husbands out there have their Wives as their main Muse. I guess, hope, wish, fantasize, that I am not the only one. Yeah, I know it is kind of TACKY and CLICHÈ. My Wife would say that it is ROMANTIC.
Tacky or not – for me it’s true. I used to write a lot when I was much younger – another cliché – to handle my existential angst. Like a Byron, Shelley, Keats, Boye, Lagerkvist or Anderson. I fancied myself if not on par with those then at least not far from. I still think that some of what I wrote then was that good.
Then I met my wife. Found other ways of dealing with my angst, and for a while I wrote very little fiction or poetry.
But Wives are trusty creatures :D My better half kept poking me, kept asking me about a few characters I had shared with her, prodded me, nudged and nagged. The she dragged me over to NaNoWriMo in 2008. Nothing, absolutely nothing. ‘Cause I thought I’d actually have to write a REAL Novel, one of quality, that could be published after some editing.
It wasn’t until this year, this NaNoWriMo, that I realized that it’s all about getting the word count, not about the quality or even the outline. So what if my characters are shallow, inconsistent and Mary-Stu’s to the power of 100? Let them be, let them, and let the storyline run all over a horribly thought out world. So what if my first 50k words are noting but The Greatest Generic Predictable and Non-Unique NaNo Novel ever written? Really. Who does it harm, if I manage to write 50k words – which translates to around 200 pages of PROSE – I have never done that before, so in actually doing it I will have WON´- over myself, my inner critic, my bad self-confidence and above all over my inability to ever FINISH anything :D
All that because of my Wife.
Darling, I love you.
Btw – do go and have a look at my Wife’s Blog on Writing, she has worked so hard at making it worth your while – nice, personal posts all about her struggles and victories in writing, with links, a stack of Fantasy Writing Prompt Generators and links to other writers’ blogs.
Literary Lint 