I NEED A WIFE

 

[Originally written while my husband lived but still relevant]

Have you ever wondered why male authors appear to be more prolific than women?  Historically, they do have more published books.  But, I don't believe that men are the better writers simply because they have more books on the market.  I believe they have more books on the market because most of them have/had some woman to sweep their floors, wash their socks and make sure they took time out to eat.  Some men even have the kind of wife who does everything for them except their thinking.  You know.  They're the wives you read about.  The ones who type one-hundred-and-twenty words a minute.  Now, I want one of those.

A wife who cooks and cleans and types and gives good back rubs should be standard equipment for all potential authors.  I need a wife to do all of the stuff my dear husband, who is retired and home all the time, thinks I should do immediately, if not sooner - just because I'm here.  It doesn't matter that I'm deep into structuring my third novel.  The tomatoes are ripe and have to be scalded and peeled - NOW!  "Sure, dear, find me a wife and she'll do it while I figure out this new character's astrological makeup."

Yesterday, I planned to work on the rewrite of my second novel - but yesterday there were peppers to be pickled.  Right now, our kitchen table has more ripe tomatoes on it than my desk has disks - and BOTH need processing.  Oh, boy, do I need a wife.  My house hasn't had a wife since the last kid left home and I retired.  Well, not really.  My husband retired.  I couldn't retire as a housewife because I never married a house in the first place.  I married a man who cooked, and I raised my kids to either clean it or ignore it.

I did both while they were still around.  And, I wrote umpteen drafts of two novels, on a Remington Standard, in the midst of it.  But, since they grew up and left and I've discovered the joys of virtual cut and paste, I've been writing full time and it is beginning to pay off, in spite of wifely interruptions.The earlier [truncated] version of my work on Sappho entitled PSAPPHA was produced from the draft I wrote in 1969, with five kids under twelve fighting in the background, and released in November 2000.  Now out-of-print you can read the restored, revised, augmented version as SAPPHO SINGS.

My Gettysburg novel, FIXIN' THINGS took 30 years from draft to print, It might have come out years earlier - if I'd only had a wife.