The challenges of having a partner who is as creative as you are...

Last week, knowing that I was going to be horrendously busy finishing a book, I invited people to suggest subjects for this blog. 

I try to write a blog every day, and writing it only takes a few minutes, as a general rule, because, once I know what I want to write about, it’s usually a simple case of letting my brain run off at the mouth, as it were. Sometimes, it takes me longer to decide what to write about than it does to write the blog. I thought that if I gave that decision over to you guys I could shorten my blog writing time by... oh... probably fifty percent. So, that’s what I did, and it worked.

Mr and Mrs Creative

Today’s question comes from Dave Higgins @David_J_Higgins, and it’s pretty cool. He wanted me to write about, “The challenges of having a partner who is as creative as you are.” I’m not sure whether he means as creative as I am, but you get his drift. I’m pretty sure he’s suggesting that the husband and I are pretty well equally creative, and he wonders what it’s like having two people in a relationship who have that trait in common.

I think having equals, of any stripe, in a relationship can only be a good thing.

I think having two people in a relationship  who understand the rigors of what they do, who understand why they do what they do, and who understand the demands of the creative process can only be a good thing.

I thinking having two people in a relationship who have what some people might call ‘creative minds’ can be a touch challenging at times.

I do wonder what makes David think that the husband and I are equally creative, though, and I am flattered by that. So, thanks, Dave.

We do joke about this quite a lot in our house. The husband and I joke that we never stop working, which is probably because we never stop working. We joke that writing is all we ever talk about... OK, writing and the kids, but that’s only because those are the two main topics of conversation. We joke that there are only so many words in the air in our house at any one time, so we can’t both have a good day’s writing on the same day, but that’s generally because when the husband’s out at meetings all day, I tend to get an awful lot more work done than I do when he’s sitting in his office writing. (I wish I could put my finger on why that is.) The husband jokes that I’m the talented one, but I think that’s because he’s the one who gets published and he feels terribly sorry that I can’t get arrested for what I love to do. Bless him! I joke that if I’m the talented one why the hell can’t I get arrested!

In fact, we joke so much that it’s about bloody time we sat down and wrote a damned fine comedy, together. What do you fancy, guys? A book? A tv sitcom? A stand-up routine? Dan could deliver a very fine stand-up routine! Maybe a play... A great British farce?

“The challenges of having a partner who is as creative as you are” are many and varied, but they’re nowhere near as demanding as the challenges of being with someone who has no ambition to make anything, who can’t wile away hours and days and weeks in his imagination, who can’t make me laugh and cry, and frustrate the hell out of me by being in the zone when I’d rather he was in my zone. 

Honestly, I don’t know what “the challenges of having a partner who is as creative as you are” really are. I don’t really know if I understand what that’s about. 

I do know that I wouldn’t change what I have for anything else on God’s Earth, or for anything else that might exist in any other version of the Universe you might want to speculate about. I’m sure there are challenges, but they’re all part of what makes the journey worth taking.

And the rewards?

Well... the rewards are beyond anything you can imagine.