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This is the latest piece I’ve adapted from my book-in-progress, Keeping You With Me, and is a bit of an accidental essay: I was originally going to submit to the exciting forthcoming anthology The First Year (Penguin, 2011), but the editor had a different idea for the story’s direction, so I’m working on a brand new one for them. I’d read this one last month at Freerange Nonfiction, so when Obama declared DOMA unconstitutional a few days ago it was ready to go. I have been wanting to write for Salon for a while, and fortuitously their Life section editor ran it. Two essays out of one: sometimes rejection leads to more opportunities. It’s a writing life lesson I think is worth keeping in mind.

Two writer friends of mine – a buddy from grad school and one of my students at Mediabistro – have previously published essays in this column, and I knew from theirs that the commenters who write in are notoriously brutal, so I am holding off on reading any comments on mine! I’m sure they’re of the same nature, a mixed bag of understanding and scorn, but the fact of the matter is I stand behind my first marriage and one of my greatest friends. It was love, real, etc so those who are surely calling for my arrest, love is just too subjective to make a judgment call sometimes.

It got me thinking about the reasons why we do things vs. the reasons we write about those things, and how they differ. When I married E., my thinking was I did not want him to go, he was the closest person to me at the time, had been there for me through my own troubles, etc., and life without him seemed bleak. That, plain and simple, is why I did it. As for why I write about it – which is something I am often asked, as if I should want to keep it private, yet another secret to carry around – I write about it because we can’t change things unless we speak out. It is a right worth exercising. I believe saying there should be one universal definition of marriage is akin saying there should be one universal definition of love and family. No one but the individuals involved in a relationship can define or set the terms for that relationship. The same things won’t work for everyone, nor should they.

The reason I write about it is to highlight that DOMA is nothing but gender-based discrimination, and the fact that there are still second-class citizens in the USA, to whom basic rights are denied, is ludicrous. As time went on, E. and I, as I saw it, came to stand for this. It doesn’t matter who the group consists of – whether gay people or people with blue hair – that’s beside the point. Equal rights. It’s what the USA is supposed to be about, isn’t it? Gender bias and discrimination in any form should be done away with. At the time Emir and I were married, I was in my early twenties and hadn’t reflected upon the larger implications and meaning yet, but now, almost ten years later, I write about it because I’ve found we fit into a picture far greater than we – as individuals, a couple, or a couple of ex-somethings – are.

Here are my notes, transcribed verbatim from notebook, from that humorous, edifying, and inspiring panel featuring Steve Almond, Cheryl Strayed, and Kerry Cohen among others.

Being a writer without a full-time academic job:
Some really great writing life advice came out of this one. Also, the panelists had excellent senses of humor.
*you have to be temperamentally ok with instability
*some months are better than others. you have to be able to write what you want to write and protect your time when you are most creative.
*don’t do horrible adjunct jobs!
*risk-taking.
*Have a job where you don’t need to take stuff home (ie, stacks of terrible undergrad papers)
*Philadelphia is a city where you can live on nothing
*the good thing about writing outside the full-time academic job position is you don’t have to publish things that are “acceptable to the academy”
*Work with other weird people
*You never know what is going to happen next, it’s about long term plans, how you’ll piece the puzzle together. It’s like being a professional gambler. You have to be ok with instability.
*Uncouple economics from creative work (advice from Steve Almond). Needing to make money off your work can be crippling, do something for income then write without thinking about the market (LM note: this advice is obviously not for everyone)
*writing is undervalued overall
*make an inventory of what you need, what your material needs are. If you’re miserable, you can’t do good work.
*Know that what you love can lead to paying gigs – remain open to crazy connections.
*”I’m from Sri Lanka and we don’t have long term plans; whoever has money gives it to those who don’t” (thought that was an interesting tidbit about Sri Lanka…possibly good place to be freelance writer
*”Get a divorce; hope people die who are leaving you inheritance” (humor advice on getting money as a writer)
*Go to Bread Loaf, AWP, network, go to residencies
*measure success in non-monetary terms
*think about “the deathbed feeling” – if on deathbed, what did that fulfilled you vs. what was “expected” of you