An Ode to My Support Staff

I wanted to write about something a little bit different today.

Writing is a very solitary endeavor. Only room for one butt in the chair and one set of hands on the keyboard, after all. Ideas spring into my head from nowhere and everywhere, and they are scribbled on scrap paper or jotted into my notebooks or typed into random Word files. Some are not written down until they are ready to come together into something new. Some never leave my head at all. This is all an individual effort.

But no man is an island, as much as I sometimes try to be. So today I want to write about someone who is indirectly indispensable to my writing process. Especially because this week he is leaving on deployment, and I don't even know what I am going to do!

His name is Jon.

Jon and I went on our first date November 26, 2011 if you ask me. If you ask him, it was the 25th. Depends on whether you want to count a certain tennis match. Anyway, it's been a while!

I don't remember when I first told him about my writing. It was within the first six months or so. Now, my writing is not a secret. I am not ashamed of my writing (obviously, hence the public blog about it!), and I will usually discuss it with just about anyone. But it is very personal for me. I don't typically bring it up unless asked, and I don't usually describe it in much detail. So it was just incredible how he always made me feel comfortable about being open with him and how supportive he has been.

He has read manuscripts that no one but myself has ever seen. He will listen to me bitch and moan about the publishing process. When I don't feel like writing, he encourages me to give it a shot anyway. He is unbelievably supportive, and I think sometimes he has more confidence that I am going to "make it" than I do. (It probably helps that he is not as familiar with the crushingly depressing statistics and process of actually doing that.) He understands when I just have to disappear into my office for a couple hours. He lifts me up when I am dejected and sick of rejection without acting like everything is sugar drops and gum balls.

I could be a writer without my boyfriend. But I am so glad I don't have to be! Thanks, boobear, I love you!!

Now there's a damn cute couple! ;)