It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them.

Obi-Wan Kenobi:   “You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them. You were to bring balance to the force, not leave it in darkness.”
Anakin Skywalker:   “I hate you!”
Obi-Wan Kenobi:   “You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you.”
Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith

Here’s something for all of you who have friends that are writers or are writers yourself. This will be a series every Thursday that I’ll call: Talking Her Down – Notes on Friendship with a Creative Writer. With all the fears, hopes and neuroses bouncing around a writer, we need to band together and support each other.

The Scene: A friend announces that she wants to write a book.

After something along the lines of, “Oh, how exciting!” you begin to wonder how her creative endeavors will affect you, outside of invitations to lavish book release parties and signed first edition copies of all her works, of course. And if you’re not wondering, you should be.

The Dialogue: “I can’t get this scene to work.” “I wrote our high school Chemistry teacher into The Book last night.” “Will you read this draft and tell me what you think?” “Did you get a chance to read that stuff I emailed you last night?”

Entire conversations, especially in the beginning, will revolve around his creative processes – or lack thereof. Like a new father will learn out of love and necessity to diaper a screaming newborn, you will become adept at inserting phrases of encouragement, sighs of empathetic frustration and snorts of laughter into discussions of character motive, locale and conflict about which you actually know nothing.

The Conflict: Writers have the skills and means to momentarily drive their closest friends crazy.

You will have moments of blinding rage and utter disgust with your writer, but you will not take them too much to heart. She calls to announce that her book is pure crap and must immediately be burned, to which you instantly remember the three days you were out with “the flu” in order to proofread her “this time it’s really done” final draft before she shipped it out for review by a literary agent. She suddenly clams up about her latest work and snappily says, “I don’t want to talk about it, OK? Why are you always asking about my book?”

The Hero: You, if you’re lucky enough to be the friend of a creative writer.

I have met many a writer. I am friends with many a writer. I am best friends with a writer. Perhaps I should say that, despite it all, I am still best friends with a writer and some of the sweetest words ever spoken was hearing her say, on the day her book was sold, “I honestly don’t think I could have ever done this without you.”