A Mixed Marriage Led to an Understanding of Compromise

A Mixed Marriage Led to an Understanding of Compromise by Debra H. Goldstein

My husband and I are four months shy of being married for thirty-nine years. Will we make it? People bet against this union from the day we announced our engagement. He loves sports; I’m addicted to theater. He loves sports; I read books. He watches the news and sporting events; I read the news online and watch comedies and procedurals on TV. Even our college allegiances vie against each other – although I scalped my University of Michigan student tickets, his blood has run crimson from his first days at Alabama when Bear Bryant was there and now he secretly thinks Nick Saban is God.

 

We compromise. I go to ballgames (sometimes with a book in my purse) and he goes to plays with me. For our twentieth anniversary, I gave him tickets to the Allstar Game, he gave me beautiful earrings (that I picked out). Other anniversaries have been marked by tickets for him (and usually one or more of our children) to the Final Four, the Superbowl, and, of course, any college championship games Alabama has played in. I’ve made many a foray to Broadway, the Kennedy Center, and other venues with friends or one or more of our children. So far, it has worked. But, who knows?

 

Although I still had my day job when I submitted my first piece that was published, I consider that submission, which was a decade ago, as the date I began writing seriously. When Five Belles Too Many, the fifth Sarah Blair mystery is released by Kensington in July, I will have seven novels and more than forty published stories to my credit. I’ve been fortunate enough to be a finalist for Agatha, Anthony, Derringer, and Silver Falchion awards and to have won an IPPY award, but each time I put words on paper, I ask myself whether they work? Will this story or book make it? Do I have what it takes to be a writer?

 

It has taken me awhile to learn that my writing career is like my marriage: it requires compromise. I must compromise on word choices – many of the words I think are darlings must be balanced against reality and eventually end up discarded. The time spent on actual writing rather than social media/PR is often referred to as a balancing act, but it really is a compromise between doing those two things and giving oneself enough respect to know when to step away and recharge one’s batteries so that the act of writing or promoting is fun. There also is a compromise between writing with the hope of gaining commercial success and love from the masses versus writing what is in one’s heart, even if it only finds a small audience.

 

For now, my marriage and my writing career are puttering along. In your lives, too, there are compromises. Whether you are an author or a reader, what are some of the compromises you make or have made at some point in your life or career?