Letters to the Editor
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This Business About Not Wanting Other To Read Your Stuff...
...is the mark of an amateur. Carey's suggested Writers' Workshop will cure you. You will get to a point where you are eager to show off your stuff, and where you are grateful for suggestions.
Finding a place to write is not so hard. Imagine if you needed to find a place to play drums or to butcher cattle. Your gift of writing is simple.
Just do it, and be glad you are not Solzenitsyn, writing in your own blood, on toilet paper, in a Gulag shithouse.
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Or...
Ursula K. LeGuin once said in a talk that she did a lot of her writing in the attic after everyone went to bed. Another friend of mine used to write before her household woke up. Another thought is to schedule time where you go to your local library and write there. The librarians have got your back. They learned "SHHH!" in Library Science 101. Good luck!
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Divorce your wife...NOW
Okay, not really...just thought I'd be the first in with the standard Salon advice :)
But, seriously, dude, standing over your shoulder while you're typing and offering helpful advice? That's just crazy making. You ought to be able to politely communicate that the writing process involves a good deal of solitary effort before any feedback will be helpful. There's also the "go write your own damn story" response. Pick the one that works best for you :)
I have a similar issue, though sans kids. Between career and relationship, I have a great many demands on my time. Yet I find that I need solitude to pursue my creative endeavors or (often) just to feed my introverted soul. My extroverted soul gets fed plenty good :)
I've negotiated with my partner for designated times and rules for private work. In the designated time, I'm simply unavailable. I don't answer questions, I don't make plans, I don't accept feedback, I don't engage in conversation.
Having the designated time has really improved things. Now I don't feel like I have to jealously grab whatever moment I can find.
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Think of this as your job
Be polite, but firm. Interruptions of this type wouldn't be allowed in an office, and if you are serious about making writing your career, you should mark out boundaries. If you aren't an early bird or night owl to work when everyone else is asleep, then mark out your hours and tell your wife and children that this is your work time and they must respect it.
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take your laptop to Starbucks...
and stop making excuses...
And if you keep making excuses, read Annie Lamott's "Bird by Bird" and cut it out!
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Women making time and space for themselves
I sympathize with this writer . . . and she is a woman, isn't she? The fact that she's gone back to writing means a changed relationship with her family. This will be a big adjustment for them. Maybe they worry that if she's successful in her writing she'll be abandoning them in some way. And what if it were her husband doing the writing, would he be allowed to go off into his study and write while the family tiptoed around him? Probably so. Unfortunately, there's a double standard. Men seem to be better at claiming time for themselves.
Jean Kerr (a housewife and writer during the 1950s) used to drive off and sit in her car and write. She said it was the only way she could write uninterrupted. This writer may need to get out of the house (in addition to joining a writing group). As long as she's home, her kids and husband will continue to bug her.
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that's weird...
I thought the letter writer was a woman - and then I come here to read the comments and apparently everybody else thinks it's a man. Maybe I missed a gender reference somewhere - have to go back and check!
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Don't create obstacles
I won't even let someone stand over my shoulder and watch me write an email. Or a letter to Salon. That is seriously annoying. But that really shouldn't be an obstacle. Tell your wife & kids (nicely) what Daddy's writing time rules are - no interruptions, no helpful advice. If they can't respect that, you've got other issues to attend to.
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Some Thoughts on this Painful Subject
First, my family members (wife, two kids -- at least at the time of the First Big Creative Burst) didn't get all up in my business when I was working during that big opening I experienced. Or maybe they did and I was oblivious. Maybe that's why after 23 years I became divorced a second time (it may have become a pattern now). But like Cary I did reject the writer's group idea at first. I still do -- for me. I agree it can probably be very helpful as well as gratifying for a lot of people, but see, I still feel as Cary did early on, that I am destined to do something Great and Terrible with my words. Well, terrible for sure. I'm hoping for great as well. And I don't care if it sees the light of day either.
I've found, though, two things to have been of tremendous utility, at least in my own strange case: first, listen to one's gut and if you feel it strongly, reject writer's groups in favor of the advice of William S. Burroughs and "exterminate all rational thought." Become what you are writing. Let yourself be possessed by it. It's insane. It works.
Second, once you have created that "Monster in a Box", before it crushes you the way it did Spauling Gray, find yourself a very good editor (I can recommend a truly great one) and hand it over to someone who understands what you're doing and is qualified to help you through the process. If it weren't for my having stumbled upon a brilliant editor this thing I've been carving out for years would remain in the box a la the poor schmuck in "Sideways." Instead, it will at last, at least, have a finished form, a cover, a title, a life of its own. Whether it sells, sells well or just becomes a classic after I am long gone doesn't matter. Only the process matters.
It feels good to be coming to the close of this thing, after a long period of being blocked (and that is what, in essence, it is about, after all, anyway) for so long. It feels damned good. And except for that one ex-wife the rest of my then-family remain my family and love me and maybe that's what had to happen, maybe that's how that story actually reads.
Being a writer is not a career -- it is a condition. If you don't accept the conditions of the condition you'll forever feel someone is looking over your shoulder. It just may be you.