The Author’s People – Part Four/Final Post

There is one person (or in some cases one set of people) in an author’s life that has the ability to make, or break, everything that an author requires to do their job. Not at a professional level (as we’ve already discussed there are all kinds of people that can help or hinder at that level), but at a spiritual one.

This is the role of champions, and it comes with expectations that should be cut in marble, signed with blood, hung on a chain of gold, and placed on the wall so it can be seen every day. It’s the reason that I left this post to last—I’m hoping it resounds through every author that reads it with absolute clarity.

So who is this most substantial presence in an author’s life? Who has the ability to lift the writer up, or, in the worst case scenario, tear an author down?

It’s the author’s significant other(s). And I cannot stress enough how important they are to your success.

Now, before I continue with my point, I want to make it very clear that I do not mean an author requires a significant other in their life or they are going to fail, because that would be absolute hogwash. What I do mean is that if you do have a significant other(s) in your life, it is imperative that they are supportive of what you’re doing. A supportive significant other is the only kind of significant other that should be allowed in an author’s life. (My own personal belief is that they are the only kind of significant other that should be allowed in anyone’s life, but this post is specific to author’s expectations, so…)

So, what do I mean by supportive? Or, to state it in the term that I’ve been using through this set of blog posts, what expectations should we, as authors, have of the significant other(s) in our lives?

The simple answer to that is that we should expect our significant other(s) to recognize the importance of our endeavours, and to do everything in their power to support them.

Okay, stop rolling your eyes. Now I’ll give you the long answer and hopefully explain myself.

I don’t mean that you should expect your CIS husband or lesbian wife or asexual partner to read your most explicit scenes of hot man on man sex if that’s not their thing. Nor should they be expected to smile and coo over every half-naked or completely naked image of “that guy who looks just like your OC, oh my, God, isn’t he hot?!” that comes across your dashboard. That’s not fair.

What you do have the right to expect, however, is that your… (okay, I’m just going to cut significant other(s) down to SO because I’m getting tired of typing it out)… SO will give you the time to pursue your endeavours. That means those times that you “just have to finish this chapter, babe, or I’m going to lose the flow” because those are going to happen. Now, I’m not saying that you should make it a regular occurrence because there isn’t a person out there that isn’t going to end up a little bit peeved if they’re waiting to leave for Cousin Joey’s wedding, whilst standing at the door in their favourite outfit with the dog-sitter or baby-sitter, listening to you scream that you need another hour for the eighth time that week. But there will be times when you’re going to need that fifteen minutes or that half an hour that you might not have allotted for. You should be able to expect that your SO is going to understand that.

You have the right to expect that your SO is going to offer sympathy and understanding on your bad days, even when those bad days don’t seem like they’re based on anything meaningful. (But they said in their review that my main character’s clubfoot was a redundant flaw! *tears, tears* It’s been three weeks and the publisher hasn’t got back to me on the manuscript, and yes I know that it’s a six-week turnaround, but still! *angst, angst* I just had to d-d-d-delete the last two thousand words I wrote—wait… that one is actually meaningful and deserves all the tears you want to spill over it). Point being, if there is an SO or two or three or whatever in your life, when you are experiencing something that is causing you pain, you deserve to have that pain recognized and to be comforted by them.

You should expect that your SO is going to celebrate your victories. It is not “just a stupid book,” your release day is a magical and wonderful moment, and that royalty cheque that you got after that first quarter was not “a waste of everyone’s time.” No one is expecting flowers and wine every time they release a novel (although, if you’re reading this and you ARE an SO to an author, we surely do like it. I’ll wait for a moment while you go write that down) but it’s not unreasonable to expect a “congratulations” or a “that’s fucking cool, baby, go you!”

I hear of too many authors that feel like what they’re doing is meaningless or trivial, and far too often the reason that they feel this way is because they’ve heard that very thing from their SO. I have also seen just how amazing it is to have a supportive SO – to hear an author talk about how her husband let her bawl on his shoulder for ten minutes because she got a bad review, to watch an author’s eyes light up as they show off the simple card they got to celebrate their release date, to hear an SO raise hell in the background while an author tells about a negative moment in their writing career, or listen to that SO offer praise. They don’t have to get off on what you do or even understand why you do it… but they have to respect what you do because it is a part of who you are!

Your SO is in your life to compliment it, as you are in their life to compliment theirs. Expect them to live up to that calling. It’s an extremely important and significant role in an author’s life, and if you’re going to let someone take up that mantle, you deserve to have them do it right. There are enough people out there that will try to make you feel insignificant over what you do – your SO should not be one of them.

So what do you think? Please share… I’d love to hear your opinions.

Thanks for joining me! Until next time,

AF Henley <3

Henley was born with a full-blown passion for run-on sentences, a zealous indulgence in all words descriptive, and the endearing tendency to overuse punctuation. Since the early years Henley has been an enthusiastic writer, from the first few I-love-my-dog stories to the current leap into erotica. A self-professed Google genius, Henley lives for the hours spent digging through the Internet for ‘research purposes’ which, more often than not, lead seven thousand miles away from first intentions but bring Henley to new discoveries and ideas that, once seeded, tend to flourish.

Henley has been proudly publishing with Less Than Three Press since 2012, and has been writing like mad ever since—an indentured servant to the belief that romance and true love can mend the most broken soul. Even when presented in prose.

Check out Henley’s newest release, Wolf, WY on Amazon, directly through LT3 Press, or at your favourite online book dealer.

For more information please stop by for a visit at afhenley.com.