The challenges of a two-writer household

I concur with Ms. Shaken and Stirred that the Sydney Morning Herald’s piece on writerly couples and the difficulties of such unions is one of the best pieces on such a subject. They speak to several Australian-based couples on how they manage similar career paths. Some, like James Bradley and Mardi McConnachie, don’t get much input from each other until the proof stage, but share a literary agent. Others take an even more drastic approach:

Louis Nowra and Mandy Sayer have solved the writing-couple question by maintaining two homes within walking distance of each other – a version of the celebrated model of Margaret Drabble and Michael Holroyd (although, since their children have left home, this famous British literary pair have moved in together).

They prefer to keep their two apartments, which have different uses. “Louis’s place is virtually just a library where I keep a few ballgowns,” Sayer says, “whereas mine has flowers, light, antiques, a piano. We sleep and eat at my place – Louis cooks, I wash up.”

They keep their finances as separate as their domesticity. “It avoids the humdrum of the everyday creeping in; it keeps things more exciting.” Nowra says. “Besides, we have very different tastes: she loves jazz, I’m more eclectic. I get up early, she gets up late. Our writerly sensibilities are completely different, too: she loves Richard Ford, Paul Auster and Hemingway, whilst I love Collette, Proust and Nabokov.”

Even though many writers assert that having a fellow writer as a partner is essential (“You need to be with someone who understands the mental space this kind of work takes up and that when you are silent and abstracted, nothing’s wrong,” says McConnonchie) others are adamant that such couplings aren’t necessary

Shane Maloney, creator of the Murray Whelan crime novels, is adamant he could never have become a full-time author without the support of his teacher wife, Christine Johnston.

“And I don’t just mean financially. I mean that the fact that she had a real job gives me perspective on what I am doing, it keeps things real. And it’s not as if she didn’t understand that abstracted, preoccupied look I get when struggling with a book – she knows it means I would be completely useless to anyone and sends me to my shed at the bottom of the garden or to a friend’s beach house.”

He refutes the notion that what he does as a writer is more important work than the work his wife does as a teacher, “which really affects peoples lives in a lasting and meaningful way”.

All I know is, I’m a long way off from having to ponder such matters (although based on previous experience, I’m inclined to side with Maloney on the issue.) but the subject still fascinates me to no end in a way that, say, marriages between bankers never will. I guess banking just doesn’t have the same mystique….