Some of My Best Friends Are Writers

I didn’t plan it that way. It just happened. The more I look around, the more I realize I’m surrounded. I know I’ve talked in the past about how amazing creative women have come into my life to help me birth books, but today it struck me just how many of my friends are writers and how many of those friends I made before any of us knew we leaned that way and how the intricate tapestry made at the hands of lovers of words has been forming itself all along.

My best friend from second grade, for example, my oldest friend by a long shot – way back to Touch the Ground You’re Dead and the Training Bra Club. In 4th grade we were tasked with writing a newspaper style article about a nursery rhyme. I chose Jack and Jill. Here it is: (I did not edit, as much as I wanted to.)

Villagers Fall Down Hill
By Gaaby Rappaport
It is reported that in a small town west of London, two villagers fell down a hill. They fell down going to fetch a pail of water. Their names are Jack and Jill. They are both in critical condition. Jack, the doctors say, may have brain damage. Jill is in a coma. She could remain there the rest of her life. Jill is now being kept alive by machines. Her mother disagrees with the doctors and says, “I do not want my child to be kept alive by machines. I would like her to die naturally.” She has little hope of regaining consciousness. There is a great feeling of tragedy in the village especially for the families of these poor children.

For real. That’s it. I like it for so many reasons. Not the least of which is my nine-year-old concern for a person’s right to die.

When I was 16, the boy I was madly in love with was a writer. Once he helped me write a sonnet for my boyfriend, who was obviously someone entirely different than the boy I loved. We sat on my porch on 13 Mile Road looking at the Kentucky Fried Chicken across the street. My teenage heart was bursting in my chest under the complication of my circumstances and this is what came out:

If I treat you as if you were beneath me,
You bear my steps without complaint.
My torrential bursts of misery
You let pass over with epic restraint.
I ignore your weak attempts to serve
My wants with half-true care,
My harshest words to crush the nerve
Your lips lean to repair.
I taunt your strings and you perform,
With a smile and a bow you take your leave
Of the stage I have set for you to conform
To the parts I create for you to believe.

And if I fail to see that you’ve been true,
Then who’s the fool, me or you?

I treated the boyfriend like garbage because he wasn’t someone entirely different than who he was, namely the boy I was in love with. There are actually many great things that came from this situation. First and foremost, it has proved unbelievable grist for the mill.

Later in life, shortly after Dan and I started “dating,” the best friend from second grade became our roommate. This involved accidentally seeing Dan naked one too many times and watching us attempt to destroy one another in many horrifying ways. (Don’t worry – it all turned out okay.) Boy oh boy, though, back in those days we had F-U-N.

By this time, she and I kind of knew we were writers. She was a creative writing major, nearly done. I was a 20-year-old freshman taking my first creative writing class. I remember sitting in the backyard of our druggie/hippie commune at a little metal table that had been left behind by a previous tenant. I was sufficiently… altered and attempting to write a paper for said creative writing class about my favorite place, which happened to be my bed. It was a paper fraught with delicious descriptions of the feel of worn down, nubby flannel sheets on my feet and yummy smelling pillowcases that had been steeped in that magic combination of Trésor and saliva, with a little cigarette smoke mixed in (I wasn’t as into clean laundry then as I am now). I wrote about how he got into bed and slept where he fell, while I, on the other hand, was an eggbeater, which is an accurate depiction even 15 years later.

My memory is that my friend gave me a secondary assignment to encourage me to use my brain in a different way. Or maybe just use my brain. My memory could be inaccurate, but it went something like this: you have to use three yellow words somewhere in the paper, you know, lemon, sunshine, brick road. That’s good stuff. Delightful. It was a great paper. I tried to find it, to no avail. I tore apart my laundry room (where I keep a tub full of old writing) and my office (where I keep many files full of old writing). I’m sure I’ll find it as soon as I’ve posted this.

Today, this very oldest friend is a working writer, a professor, teaching young, probably sober minds how to access the good stuff. That boy is a writer too I think. My two best friends from high school – writers. One of my mothers – writer. My husband and two of his best friends – you guessed it – great writers. My sister-in-law and no less than five of my very closest friends, all of these lovely women are brilliant writers. And I found almost every single one of these people before any of us knew what we were, so that list doesn’t even include all of the amazing writers I’ve gotten to hook up with since I finished my first real draft.

http://mrsjanellewilson.blogspot.com
http://norwegianlutherangirl.blogspot.com
http://spearsfamilyproject.blogspot.com
http://notapeach.com
http://blythewoolston.blogspot.com

What prompted me to write this post was one of those crazy Facebook reunions. I’m sure you’ve all had them. Some shiny diamond from your past shows up and reminds you of who you used to be. And it turns out that now you’re both writers. And it turns out you’re both pretty damn happy about the whole thing.

http://thedadscene.blogspot.com

So who cares if I’m a brain slave, forced to sit in the dark of the night while the rest of my house is asleep because I have to use it up or lose it? Who cares if I close up shop and crawl into bed only to be driven back out to my computer because the words won’t leave me alone? Who cares if I’m neurotic and full of fear? Who cares if I alternate between being an ego maniac and a sniveling, insecure nutjob? Who cares that it hasn’t work out like I’d planned or that it’s been so f-ing hard? Who gives a roaring rip about sacrifices and rejection and hurt and struggle and walking around with my nerve endings on the outside of my body for all the world to see?

Together we have written books, plays, poems, songs. We get to be the trusted transcribers. Trust me, my friends, we are the lucky ones.