To Love a Writer

A few days ago, my husband and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary with a quiet dinner, cake, wine, and a relaxing Monday night. I read and tinkered with my latest novel; he browsed the Internet and played with the cats. As he's done often in the last few months, he turned to me with an appreciative smile and said, "Casey's writing!"

Though I've been a writer for more than half of my life, in the first four years of our relationship my husband rarely saw me in the role of writer. When we met, I was fresh out of my MFA program. To be honest, I had a bit of a writing hangover. Since then, he's seen me revise my first novel, twice, and start several stories that never went anywhere. But he's never actually seen me create something from scratch, build an entire life for my main character, and incessantly talk about fictional characters (at least ones of my own making).

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