Respecting Your Writerly Life, Part II: Friending Your Writing

The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.

 —Barbara Kingsolver, from “Stone Soup” in High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never

In this week’s podcast, Episode #24 (the second in our series on Respecting Your Writerly Life), we focus on treating our writing as we do our dearest friends. 

That may sound like oxymoronic thinking, given what we so often hear about how much blood, sweat, and tears is supposedly involved in the process. To quote Nathaniel Hawthorne, who can often be counted on to tick us off: 

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Okay, yeah, that’s somewhat true. If it weren’t difficult at times, everybody would be doing it, right? The operative phrase here is “at times.” Seriously, if it were always like opening a vein, nobody would be doing it. Unless they’re masochists, but those writers are so depressing to read, you gotta reach for the Lexapro.

It’s basically the same with friendship. If it were always a total drain to hang out with someone, we wouldn’t make it a point to. At the same time, we don’t expect that BFF to always say and do the “right” things to keep the relationship unfolding like a bolt of silk. It’s way more complicated than that.

And so is writing.

It makes sense, then, to treat our writing as we do a real friend. Not the kind you may have on Facebook, where you wonder, “Who is she, again?” Not the neighbor you wave to when you’re both pulling your cars into your garages. 

The genuine, authentic, life-enriching kindred spirit.

The Friend Metaphor

In the podcast episode, we talk about the following questions in what I hope is delicious detail. You can probably fill in your own details and reach the same conclusions we did:

• How do you treat your closest friends? We came up with 6 points. You may think of more. 

• What do you do when you’re with your closest friends? Again, we came up with our own specifics, but feel free to draw from your personal experience. 

• What don’t you do with your friends? You can also think of this as, “What do you sometimes have to apologize to your BFFs for?” Yeah, this one can be cringe-inducing, but it’ll be worth it. Trust me.        

Applying That To Writing

In my view, feeling friendly toward your writing is the only way you’re going to give it the respect it deserves—and the only way it will give you what you need from it. I think we have to treat our art the way we do (or wish we would) a close friend, even a mysterious one we don’t always understand. 

This is what we touched on in the podcast. Explore if you’re so moved:

• What does that look like?
  • Finding a special place to hang out together–a room, a corner, a table at Starbucks? 
  • Giving yourselves time to get to know each other—rather than
  • going right for the jugular, y’know?
  • Having fun with what you’re doing—playing with the words, the images, the ideas.  
  • Protecting each other from bullies (AKA BOHOs)—the critical voices, both within and without. 

• Not having a friendly feeling toward your writing may mean–
  • You’re writing something you think you “should” write but your heart isn’t in it. Kind of like playing with your mom’s friends’ kids when you were little, and as you got older you realized you had nothing in common
  • You’re expecting too much from it too soon. Wanting that first draft to be near perfect when it rolls out onto the screen. Forcing it to be trendy when that isn’t what it is. Telling it that it has to sell, or it’s not good enough. 
  • You’re too much in charge of the friendship. This is a two-sided, synergistic relationship, you and your writing. You might need to loosen your grip and let the writing fulfill you too. 

Play!

As we pointed out in the beginning, a close friendship isn’t totally about being all serious with each other all the dadgum time. That’s exhausting, is it not? 

These are a few suggestions for playing with the very idea of friending your writing. (We expand on these more in the podcast)

• Give your project a nickname other than the working title. 

• Decide what snack is your fave to share when you’re together. 

• Show up for a writing session with a surprise now and then: a great new pen; a hat you found at a craft fair and now have to wear when you write; a new addition to the background playlist. 

• Don’t neglect taking it out to play. The whole relationship doesn’t happen at a desk or in front of a laptop. 

What’s that going to feel like in your writing?

I predict it will:

• Make you want to spend time with it, rather than seeing it as something you really “ought” to be doing. You’ll enjoy it, even when it’s “damn hard.”. 

• Be far less anxious about “getting it right.” 

• Allow you more freedom to let the story speak, rather than dictating what it’s “supposed” to be saying. 

• Most of all, you will respect your work just as you do a dear friend. We respect our pals not because of what they accomplish, what they achieve, how much money they make, or how many followers they have on Facebook. We respect them because they’re real. And because they love us as much as we love them. 

The best thing about befriending your writing is that you can’t get it “wrong.” True friendship doesn’t have rules and conditions. The only thing it promises is love.

So go love it, Scribblies. That’s what it means to Scribble On.