By Diane Kraynak & Scott Hurd
We are a literary couple.
We’re not famous household names, like Stephen and Tabitha King.
Nor are we known for high-spirited libertine exploits like F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. We prefer to be in bed by 9:30 pm.
Perhaps we’re more like Elizabeth and Robert Browning, expressing our mutual love through our shared craft. However, unlike the Brownings, you haven’t read a syllable of it because, for some unfathomable reason, the New York Times rejected our Modern Love essay. This continues to confound us since, unlike anyone else who has ever submitted to Modern Love, we are unshakably convinced that we possess one of the most heartwarming and compelling love stories in human history.
Our love story aside, we are pleased to offer our accumulated wisdom on successful literary coupledom. We hope this will be of benefit and amusement to those already partnered with a fellow writer, those aspiring to this august estate, and the merely curious.
No literary relationship can flourish without complete agreement about that indispensable perfect punctuating pause, the Oxford comma. Gaze lovingly at this little hook that both establishes a firm connection and sets healthy boundaries: two essential qualities for any abiding relationship. We are hooked on this hook. Neither of us could marry one of the godless heathens at the AP Style Guide.
Respect for proper syntax, grammar, and punctuation is a foregone conclusion for successful writing couples; an essential prenuptial consideration alongside religion, money, sex, politics, chores, kids, careers, in-laws, and use of the TV remote. Dangling participles and split infinitives, while sadly giving rise to off-color humor, are absolute deal-breakers. At the same time—and we concede this matter is open to debate—happy literary pairs can agree to disagree over the em-dash.
A more pressing matter about which literary couples might disagree is the value of writing classes. Diane has toted spiral notebooks and a portable printer around the leafy quads of Iowa and Kenyon, humbly exposing her creations to the critique of fellow scribes and the collective wisdom of the headliners. She’s become firmly convinced that writers need community—a startling conclusion for a confirmed introvert and only child. Through classes and working with a long-time coach, she’s made friends, established credentials, and polished her craft. She has the publications to prove it.
“I don’t need no stinkin’ classes,” Scott insists, touting his status as The Most Accomplished Nonfiction Author to ever emerge from our small university’s accounting program. No rivals have yet risen to challenge his title. He did take a class once, in 1988: Business Communication, in which aspiring CPAs, financiers, and marketing mavens were schooled in the fine art of crafting business memos—a dying genre which henceforth will likely be generated by robots.
Yet, Scott is quite happy to submit his work to Diane for review, profiting by extension from everything she’s learned. While he refuses to stand on the shoulders of giants, he’s happy to benefit from one who has. That exemplifies a prime perk enjoyed by literary couples: we can edit each other’s work. Appreciating that our individual efforts are better as a result requires a dash of trust and a pinch of humility. It’s daunting to submit your writing to the assessment of another, but easier when done with someone you love and whose craft you respect.
Writing couples enjoy other benefits. We can avoid sharing anniversary cards with cringey, saccharine clichés; we’re quite capable of writing our own, thank you very much. We can share pride in each other’s accomplishments, be each other’s best cheerleader when beset with writer’s block, and offer empathy and encouragement when a rejection lands in our inbox. Such as, for instance, from @Daniel Jones at the New York Times. We can dedicate books to each other and daydream about the fabulous writing residences we’ll take together after our avalanche of royalties rolls in.
But it’s not all sweetness and light. Sometimes the truth must be spoken with love. When one of us excitedly shares a new work-in-progress and the other gingerly alludes to “shi**y first drafts,” the submitter is deflated but not defeated, because we both know what Anne Lamott meant. And we don’t murder our darling when they remind us to “murder your darlings,” because we understand what Faulkner (allegedly) said. We might prefer our darling to make jazz hands and say, “This is great, sweetie! Oprah will love this!” because fibs and jazz hands are gentler on the ego. But they don’t help polish good writing—and at the end of the day, that’s what we both want.
We also want to be happy. As a writer couple, that requires an appreciation that we aren’t in competition; that we approach writing differently. Diane barfs on a page. When Scott sees it, he immediately begins to copyedit, when all Diane wants is a treetop assessment, not a grassroots dissection. Scott doesn’t share his work until he thinks it’s polished, and is chagrined when Diane (usually correctly) insists that it isn’t. Scott wants to submit too soon, and Diane lets things marinate too long. She’s a crockpot; he’s a microwave. But we manage to bring out the best in each other, and either way, dinner gets served.
And that’s a modern love that keeps us together.
Well that, and the Oxford comma.
_____________ Diane Kraynak and Scott Hurd are University of Richmond classmates. Scott later went to Oxford, where he learned about commas; Diane became an art therapist and then a nurse practitioner. They have not (yet) been featured in the NYT’s Modern Love column but have published other pretty good stuff. Diane’s work has been designated as notable in Best American Essays and in 2015 she won the Women’s National Book Association’s award for Creative Nonfiction/Memoir. Scott is an award-winning author of five books published in four languages, and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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