“I already have a primary partner,” I explained to a new lover. “It’s my work. It’s my books. If you’re coming along, you have to understand that you’ll be sharing me with my stories and my characters.”
Very often, people ask me for writing advice. Or social media advice. Or career advice. They assert that they “have a book” in them – like it’s a vestigial organ from a body plan they haven’t yet activated. As if writing was something you just decided to do one day and didn’t practice and study and devote your days to for decades.
I want to laugh and say, “I am not the person to ask. I have no strategy. No five-step plan for success. I am lovesick. I am a fool. I follow my obsessions.”
I think I have only “fallen” in love with one person in my life. But I have fallen in deep, obsessive love with several stories.