It might seem romantic to be part of a writing couple. You can swap work and give each other feedback, commiserate over rejections, and more generally share your love for language. Then again, it might sound like a nightmare. If you're full-time writers working from home, what could be worse than being cooped up in the same place trying to concentrate after a miserable fight the night before? In terms of your careers, would you have a friendly competition, or is that an oxymoron?

Maybe a romantic partnership between writers is part dream, part nightmare—or simply something in between. In a recent Off the Shelf essay published in the Los Angeles Times, Joanna Smith Rakoff, author of A Fortunate Age, reflects on her marriage to poet Evan Smith Rakoff. She says the high points of her relationship are "when we're both happily productive, furiously typing in our tiny offices at either side of the apartment, or when one is writing so well that the other becomes productive almost by osmosis."

Her thoughtful piece, which goes into the sensitive issue of money (sensitive for couples and writers alike!), is worth reading in full. "I have sometimes wondered—particularly now that we have two children—if having more money, and earning it in a way that has nothing to do with writing, wouldn't actually allow us more freedom as writers," she says.

And on a lighter note, take this fun writing couples quiz to match up 10 novelists to their writer spouses.

--Sarah C. Lange, associate editor

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