A Nano widow writes From Write Anything - 15 November 09

This article first appeared on the Write Anything website on November 15, 2009. The original text can be found here. For some time on Write Anything we had considered letting our other halves take a turn and write an article about living with a writer. For NaNoWriMo, I decided to put that into practice...

A Nano widow writes

Today I thought you'd be interested to hear from the other half of your Sunday Writer, on the trials and tribulations of being a NaNoWriMo widow...

I have lost my husband. Not permanently, you understand, but for the duration of the month of November, it's as though I am merely haunted by the ghost of Paul Anderson, pacing the bedroom, tap-tapping away on his keyboard, bleating periodically for another cup of coffee. This is the third year running that Paul has participated in NaNoWriMo, and I'm just about getting the hang of this temporary widowhood. So here are my tips for the spouses and partners, especially the first-timers, on how to cope.

1. Bring coffee. Or tea. Or gin. Or beer. Or whatever it is that helps your honey write like a demon for several hours straight. Make sure the kettle always has water in it, and that it's just off the boil. Having to fill the kettle up and wait for it to boil saps creativity and is responsible for trains of thought disappearing into the ether, never to be seen again.
2. Stock up on snack food. Crisps, biscuits, crackers, the odd Pot Noodle or instant pasta meal. Anything that requires minimal preparation. Because there's nothing worse than coming in from an evening out and finding the writer in your life trying to make a meal out of a block of cheese. Paul will do this regardless of whether or not it's NaNoWriMo, but at least for the other 11 months I know he has time to prepare a meal if he wants to and that it's simply laziness preventing him from doing so (and the plaintive wail of "But I like cheese!").
3. Don't ask anything of them. If you have any paperwork, get it out of the way in October. If shelves need hanging do it yourself or get a handyman in to do it. If your writer does the cooking all the time, subsist for the whole month on microwave meals or take-away pizza. Just make sure you take up running (see point 4 below) and consider stocking up on vitamin supplements.
4. Take up a hobby or indulge in your existing favourite pastime. This is perhaps the only month when you can go off on your own without feeling remotely guilty. Gardening is my pleasure, but unfortunately November in Britain is the dreariest month of the year, with nothing whatsoever to recommend it, leaving me bored and frustrated indoors with only the seed catalogues for company. Organisers of NaNoWriMo, I beseech you to move it to September or April, or some month when the sun warms my back and the rain is kept to the minimum needed to encourage growth!
5. Don't interrupt them in the middle of their work. Set up some kind of signal - a sign to let you know when they are amenable to interruptions (when they've just finished a five-hour writing session and are now messing about on Facebook) and when it is absolutely, categorically a Do Not Disturb moment (the plot has just come together, the muse is with them, the bells are chiming and they know - just KNOW - that this is the best chapter they have ever written). Door open versus door closed, music on versus music off - that sort of thing.

Above all, indulge them in this. It is, after all, only for one month, and it is actually worth the inconveniences of having an absent partner to be able to crack open that champagne with them at 11:59pm on 30th November and see their faces lit up with the achievement of it all. Get in touch with the other widows and widowers in your spouse's writing circle and swap tips, rants and sympathy.

And give back rubs.