How to wean a husband to scatter socks

And also write and publish a book about this

The first years of marital life are not like a vacation in Gagra - everyone is convinced of this on his own and, as a rule, is in no hurry to share with others their experience. But Tatyana Tsvetkova, our permanent author, not only devoted a debut book to this topic, but also wrote an essay for the path for the “bitter” essay: from idea and writing torment to a book counter.

Starting from February 24, 2022, we were all in the face of the advancing barbarism, violence and lies. In this situation, it is extremely important to preserve at least the remnants of culture and support the values ​​of humanism - including for the sake of the future of Russia. Therefore, the editorial office of Gorky will continue to talk about books, reminding our readers that the world remains in the world and fiction.

Tatyana Tsvetkova. How to survive the first years of marriage. Tips for an inexperienced wife. M.: AST, 2022. Content

When I got married in 2018, the stress was so great that I had to start a blog. This beginning would be a good descent if it followed: "But I never wrote before." Alas, I continuously engaged in literary work over the past twelve years since the age of twenty. I wrote about my travels by hitchhiking in Europe, Mongolia, the Middle East (Syria and Jordan). I received a major literary “Debut” literary prize for just one of these works in the genre of travel notes, it was even translated into English. I wrote articles in popular publications of socio-cultural and Christian themes: “such deeds”, “Pravmir”, “Mercury.ru”-and of course, in “Gorky”.

After marriage, I ended up in a cage of difficulties that had fallen on me and stopped singing, but, thanks to the force of inertia, I started a blog. It turned out that the harder the situation is in reality, the more interesting on paper, especially if you add irony, and the more humor it is possible to notice in the vicissitudes of family life, the less acute its injections become. I began to fix everything. As on the morning of February 14, she broke the shoe shelf with her foot (more precisely, a leg on the shelf), I don’t even remember why. And in the evening, my husband told me: “Tanya, be my wife ... and further” - the best congratulation on the day of all in love with those that I heard. As I kept a separate stack of beating plates, because I, although expressive, but economical. As in the Moscow apartment of my husband, who got him from my grandmother, I slept facing fat spots on the wallpaper and how I hung their tablecloths with the drawings of the Aborigines, which was sent to me by a friend from Australia. As a month after the wedding, I went on a working trip to Sardinia and spoiled everyone's mood, reasoning how beautifully it would return home, while my companions dreamed of staying there forever. It is surprisingly difficult to love a person, even if I really are in love with him-and this is that, until 28 years old, I wanted to devote my life to God in some beautiful monastery.

The blog read fifty of my friends, sometimes they left two or three comments, for which I was immensely grateful to them. Sometimes I was visited by thoughts about how beautiful it would be if my diary suddenly broke the Internet. I stopped thinking about it only when I finally found my own voice and began to earn money with literary work, that is, to cooperate with the above -mentioned publications.

Two years later, a happy but difficult life together my husband and I moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Directly in the midst of the move, I decided on the road and a cool course of writing skills. If it were not for this feeling of flight, when you are no longer here, but not there, I would not allow myself such a waste of resources during such an energy -consuming event. But it is not for nothing that the “flight” is an immortal metaphor for literary creativity, let it be soreness: the passage of this course has become fateful for me. I learned that publishing a book in the publishing house is not so difficult. It turns out that there is no need to immediately bomb the publishing IMILS with their manuscript. Moreover, at first no manuscript is needed. Sinopsis is needed, a summary of the future book and a comparative analysis of publications of this subject: before spending inspiration on the work itself, you need to inspire the publishing house so that it gives your book the right to life.

Upon learning of this strategy, I felt sports interest and began to think about what I would like to write a book. Yes, it was in such a sequence: first, a desire to publish something appeared, and then the thoughts of what exactly. In American films, the writer walks with picturesque piles of sheets according to the editorial offices, he is denied everywhere, but then a miracle happens: he loses the manuscript, the editor of the largest publishing house finds it and is accepted for walking in all bars in search of a writer until they finally reunite. A typical romantic melodrama, only instead of a man leading a woman to the aisle, the editor accompanies the writer to the world of published books. But, fortunately, everything is really much more commonplace and therefore more real (you only need to make a reservation that I am talking about non-fiction, and not about fiction).

In short, having decided to contact the publishing house with the proposal, I remembered my blog and about my favorite topic - the first years of family life, and in the end my book was called “How to survive the first years of marriage. Tips for an inexperienced wife. " In July 2021, I entered into a contract with the AST publishing house, and already in November I had to hand over a manuscript with a volume of at least 7.5 copyright sheets (for comparison: this is half the novel Jane Austin “Pride and Prejudice”). It was no advance under the terms of the contract: you continue to work and write a book in parallel, focusing not so much on your desires and visits to the muses, but on the terms and the number of pages already written. The joy of the fact that my idea is approved by the publishing house is the only pleasure that I remember in those four and a half months spent in such tension that the matter ended at some point. However, I was only in the middle of the book.

I remember how I came to my parents in their summer village house with the intention of adding a book. I remember how I got a job in a round table with a cup of coffee and opened a laptop. I don’t remember how much I sat like that before I realized that I couldn’t write a word ... Then, within a week, I asked myself every day: “Now I can?” It is difficult to describe this condition: I did not know whether I can handle burnout until November, and if not, then what to do? From extreme excitement on this subject, I was held ... burnout itself, because in this state not only all the time is bad, but also somehow anyway.

Only at the beginning of the second week of my creative vacation, changing the location just in case and settling at home at the stove, I was able to continue. By the appointed time I composed half the book, the second half arose thanks to the notes on my blog. And thanks to the three years lived with her husband. And thanks to the fifteen years of literary creativity before that. And thanks to something that I do not know about. After all, it is impossible not to believe in a miracle when you see that the funny stories of our grows with my husband have become the pages of the book in cherry binding, which can be found in all large book countries (however, I really want it to end there as soon as possible).

I chose the second most simplicity way to build a composition, if the first to consider a chronological narrative. In fact, my book is a seat, a comedy of situations. There are constant heroes who, in every episode, that is, the chapter, encounter certain challenges (this is how it is now customary to call problems). The names of the chapters determine this very challenge: “repair”, “control”, “life”, “stereotypes”, “misunderstanding”, “money” ... I think you are already interested in looking into the last of them - however, it is possible that I will simply project my own ideas and desires to others. In any case, I will quote for you the beginning of the final chapter:

“We decided to lie down early with my husband to stay together. I lay fresh bedding, we turned off the light and started ... Talk about money.

- We should try to postpone ten thousand in the next month, - I am lying on my back and looking into the black ceiling, I know that my husband lies in the same way, even though I do not see him.

“It won’t work, we were going to buy a rack for books ...” he answers.

- Well, buy cheaper.

Pause.

“God, this lasts millennia,” the husband suddenly exclaims.

- What? - I turn to him, my eyes are used to the darkness, and I distinguish between his surprised face.

- Conversations of her husband and wife in bed about money.

“You want to change the subject,” I suggest.

- Let's.

- What do you want to talk about?

There is silence, which is gradually replaced by a measured breathing of a falling asleep man.

I turn over on the right side, close my eyes, but the dream does not go, after all, we did not agree. “Wake him up?” - I am an evil. But the obscure outlines of some living ... horse, pony ... I peer, but I can’t consider it can not be considered due to branches of trees. I'm running after him ... I can't catch up. I fall, and suddenly the animal appears right in front of me. It turns out that this is a unicorn, with a large golden horn. I open my eyes wide, because pink five thousandth pieces of paper are put on the horn. “If you carefully remove it, you can probably glue it,” I encouraging myself, and I myself pull to the horn. “You only need to tame it.” I grab onto the horn!

“Tanya, Tanya,” a familiar voice comes from somewhere.

I open my eyes. This is a husband, I still woke him up. ”

Then I share anxious thoughts about how difficult it is to live without money, about how we coped with this, as well as situations when I could not cope. It is glorious that in recent years, not only success stories, but also stories about our weaknesses, failures and mistakes have been in demand. I wrote about my not so much for the sake of fashion as because I have plenty of them.

In the head of the “life” I quote the famous words from the “little prince”: “I woke up in the morning - put the planet in order” - and I write that I always admired the men who are able to conduct households. Although the hero of the book Exupery was a little boy, I don’t think that many manage to compete with him on an equal footing, given how he uprooted the baobabs. But no one requires this like this - men, at least put your socks in place. Yes, I don’t care about all men, I am interested in one specific husband and two of his specific socks, left and right. They always remain lying around where they were attracted by the power of gravity immediately after he pulled them off. Oh yes, I write about this in the chapter called “Order”, and not “Life” - all household issues did not fit into one chapter. By the way, the word “socks” during the book is used only nine times, and I don’t know how you, but it surprised me: yes, I was sure that there were much more - as much as in our daily life.

“The only thing I can’t come to terms with is with his dirty socks. Apparently, during the act of creation of a man, a system failure, error number 600: “Throw. Dirty. Socks. On. Pol. V. S. E. D. D.”.

I think that God understood a miss and later created a woman beautiful precisely so that she could tolerate the flaws of her husband. Where else can we get strength, if not in this resource? You noticed that when we like it, the mood improves by itself and it becomes easier to love your neighbors. At least forgive their weaknesses. ”

The name of the book is fully consistent with its content, so it is clear that at the beginning of our life together we did not receive only pleasures. “But they were at least? - the reader reasonably ask. “Have you successfully survived these first years?” Of course, I will answer, everything is like in a real sitcom, or even in Romkom, where everything always ends well. And begins, by the way, too. Here are the first lines of the book:

“Last night, my husband suddenly turned to me in bed:

“I want to tell you something ... unpleasant.”

It suddenly became cold, and I pulled them to me.

“Tanya, because you and I will die at different times, one of us will survive another.”

The first chapter, by the way, is called "Divorce". I wonder if I thickened the colors because of superstitious fear, writing that everything is fine with us, because of the fear of sending and losing reader attention or to shade all the good that we had? I like the third option most of all, and attribute all three at once it would be immodest.

The head of "Romance" tells about the third anniversary of our marriage. We came to the St. Petersburg restaurant, made an order, ate, and ... I caught myself thinking that I want to go home-to inspect with my husband some detective Soviet series. Romance has left our life-like fire from a fireplace located opposite our table: the waiter could not breed it due to safety precautions. "Are we really not to make a fire of love and passion for security of safety?" I thought and asked for a strawberry punch. No, we did not go drunk then to look at the divorce of bridges, did not walk all night, did not climb on the roofs, we returned home and inspected the series, but I was pleased that we were so calm and with humor we accept different life situations. If we consider romance what exalts a person, then we may not worry even because of those situations that should have exalted us, but did not do this, that is, we can rise above the elevation itself.

I will not say that this book will help you cope with the difficulties of the first or subsequent years of your marriage. The first version of the annotation says that “the author does not offer universal recommendations. But inspires to look for your own path. It also gives such unexpected tools such as humor and absurdity to overcome difficulties. When it seems that nothing but a divorce will save you, stand on your head. Maybe you will see a solution to the problem, and sometimes its absence . ” But my main idea is wider: if you managed to take a creatively, at an unusual angle to look at the vicissitudes of family life (which was no longer written about), which means that everything will probably work out with other life spheres. Pleasant reading.