"Writing
After Widowhood"
By
Barb Caffrey
A while back, Deborah J. Ross asked me to talk about
the differences between writing while my beloved husband Michael was still
alive, and writing now. As I've had many years since my husband's unexpected
death in 2004 to contemplate this, I agreed to talk about it. Just know in
advance that it's not easy, but it is possible. (Spoiler alert!)
Anyway, when Michael was alive, we wrote some short
stories together despite having very different writing styles. We could do this
because we'd heard Eric Flint, in 2002, discuss how he collaborated with other
authors. It was all about communication, Flint said, “Also, if you could check
your ego at the door, that would help immensely.”
That wasn't all Michael did, mind you. He edited for
me, as I edited for him. He and I talked about our stories for many hours a
day, every day of the week, a great gift…and he made sure to do all the things
a good husband does for his wife without prompting—and without fanfare.
It was because of all of this that I was able to
write 230,000 good words in thirteen months back in 2002 and 2003. And into mid-September
of 2004, I believe I wrote around 100,000 words, which isn't bad at all when
you consider we had a big move across-country and had to find work and lodgings
in the process.
Then, disaster struck. Michael died in September of
2004 of four massive heart attacks. He was awake after the first, but before
the rescue squad could get to him, he had his second heart attack. He was
clinically dead for eighteen minutes, and then was revived at the hospital. He
later had heart attacks three and four…within eleven hours of the first heart
attack, my beloved husband was gone.
There was absolutely no warning of this.
Not long after my husband died, I moved back to
Wisconsin to be closer to my family. I wasn't much good for anyone for several
years; I admit this freely. I was in deep shock, and in some ways I never
completely came out of mourning. But I was able to write again within a few
years, partly because my husband had left behind stories of his own that were
unfinished.
To my mind, it was bad enough that my husband was
dead. It would be even worse if the stories he'd worked so hard on died with
him.
So even though I wrote in a completely different
way, and had never written any space opera or military science fiction before
(Michael's work mostly straddled those two lines), I decided I was going to
finish at least some of his work and put it up for sale on my own. It would
allow me to keep at least part of my husband alive, and doing that—even though
most of the people around me, including several professional authors, did not
believe I should be wasting my effort this way—was my salvation.
