There are so many ideas that you just come up with on a day-to-day basis when you're a writer that it's very difficult to want to go back to an old fling, so to speak.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I am dismayed to realize that much of the advice I used to parcel out to aspiring writers has passed its sell-by date.
It's a different thing to write a love story now than in the time of Jane Austen, Eliot, or Tolstoy. One of the problems is that once divorce is possible, once break-ups are possible, it can all become a little less momentous.
But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - partly because of the salary cut if I went to my other love, teaching; and partly because I still have stories to tell, even though it isn't all that fun doing the work anymore.
As a writer, I wouldn't know how to not take things out of my life.
So many people romanticize writing. And I get it. But I never once wanted to be a writer.
I would try to write my own story about some East Coast suburbanite having an affair or something like that. So I did that for maybe two years or so, and it just wasn't working for me at all.
That's why writing is important to me. Time goes past, and you've been somewhere and come back that hasn't hurt you, and you've been somebody else.
I think any writer keeps going back to some basic theme. Sometimes it's autobiographical. I guess it usually is.
Writers are used to being re-created, and need it.
I can see how a relationship with a writer would be an easy thing.