getting to know you

I’m reading the memoir The Widow’s Story by Joyce Carol Oates and in it she reveals that her husband of 40 years, editor Raymond Smith, never read her fiction – he would read her essays and reviews but not her stories.

The woman’s written like eleventy-thousand stories! Seriously? He didn’t read a-one?

Apparently not. Oates writes:

Why was this? There are numerous reasons. Writing is a solitary occupation, and one of it’s hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy, freedom.

Plus she goes on to mention elsewhere that his opinion meant so much to her she would have been devastated to have him view her fiction critically.

Because of this, she concedes, he may not have known her completely. But the arrangement was agreeable to them both.

I think I understand the Oates-Smith arrangement completely.

Stories always encapsulate something personal, but what is hard for someone close to you to recognize is that it may not be relevant, it may not be important, and it may not even be true.

There is nothing that feels as awkward as someone close to me reading my fiction.

Right now R. is sitting on the couch reading a short story of mine and I’m nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Loneliness, autonomy, freedom… I would also add “shyness,” as an element bred in that trinity.

I don’t want R reading my stories! Not until they are perfect. I want him to like me! What if my stories aren’t to his tastes? We do like quite different sorts of reading matter.

Currently, he takes my writerly leanings in stride. It is respected. It is part of the established order of things. It is accomodated, my need for “just 15 minutes more,” my requests for no noise, please, “I can’t today; I want to finish this story…”

But if he doesn’t like these stories (or if not “like,” at least see some returns reflected on the page to make up for the times I excuse myself from our shared activities) I wonder how the tone would change? I’d sense the difference. It would strongly undermine things.

Ideally you don’t just “let your partner have their little hobbies.” Ideally, you recognize that it is their passion that makes them who they are, a necessary and integral thing.

I fear that tone of accomodation that often underscores the dynamic of some partnerships. When one of the pair is involved in something the other is not, something that is deemed ‘frivolous’ – “But… it makes them happy!” What subtle disparagement! And there is always the unspoken threat of their tolerance being withdrawn.

I want his patience with me. I don’t want him to ever think, Hunter is locked away writing her bullshit stories again — how long will I have to indulge this, before she grows out of it…?

And I want to reward his support by writing stuff that is totally fucking rad.

But these baby steps are necessary…the false starts & rough drafts.

It feels fine sharing stories with other writerly folk, people who are also familiar with the shadowlands of fiction. Others who know what a weird domain it is, of half-truths and blurred edges.

It feels very risky to allow others the privilege. I need armour! Secrecy is that armour. But it doesn’t feel quite right…