Help me, Obi-Mom Kenobi! You're my only hope.

Qui-Gon Jinn:       “Do you hear that?”
[a rumbling is heard in the distance]
Jar Jar Binks:       “Yeah.”
Qui-Gon Jinn:       “That is the sound of a thousand terrible things headed this way.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi: “If they find us, they will crush us, grind us into tiny pieces, and blast us into oblivion!”
Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace

The First Manuscript

Until your writer friend starts on his manuscript, by actually putting words on paper, he is not a writer and you can relax knowing that neither your life nor your friendship will change much. Toss a polite smile on your face when he brings up the subject of “becoming” a writer. Feel free to nod along politely if he talks about the topic he’s “going to” write about. You can even safely daydream for a few minutes while he discusses how great it’s going to be when he “is” a famous writer and can tell his boss that he’s not coming to work anymore. If he’s not writing, he’s not a writer. He’s merely a dreamer or a researcher, both of which will be easy on your friendship.

A manuscript, however, is the real deal. This is one of those flashing cherry strobe light moments in your friendship, similar to him getting married or having a child. Therefore, if he mentions that a) he cranked out 1027 words last night; b) he’s on chapter 5 of a historical novel; or c) he can’t quite find the correct way to bring a talking squirrel named Ed into a particular scene, immediately start making yourself a double espresso and find your hidden chocolate stash. You’re going to need both the comfort and the caffeine.

There are multiple types of first time ever manuscripts and, regardless of genre, they’re all crap. Yes, crap. The most common is the trial run manuscript. This is nothing more than a few chapters plugged into the computer or, if they’re feeling particularly highbrow and expecting to write the next Great American Novel, scribbled onto yellow legal pads with an expensive pen. If he is in possession of a fountain tip pen, it will be used. Go ahead and have a truffle, but realize that this is generally nothing more than an exercise to see how dedicated he is to the writing process, how willing he is to sitting alone for hours on end and a means of tossing out lots of ideas on a variety of subjects. Characters will change mid-draft, settings will be unrecognizable from chapter to chapter and the plot can move from fantasy to gothic to chick lit to science fiction in the course of 50 pages.

The danger comes when you hear these fateful words, “I finished this last night. Will you read it and tell me what you think?” After a few pages, you may begin to wonder if your friend has actually read his own words. You will catch yourself thinking, “How did he not notice that his subjects and verbs don’t usually match up?” or “He left out at least 25 words in these 3 chapters alone.”

Depending on the level of your friendship and your writer’s current emotional state, you will need to decide how best to critique his first step into the writing pool. Do you focus on the details or the overall story? This first time out, it’s probably best to stick to the positives. “You describe things really well. I could really see how Katherine’s office was laid out.” Of course, if the writing is truly disastrous, you’ll have to be honest about some of the major flaws. “I was confused for most of the book about Zargon’s inability to fly, but then you mentioned how his belt is his source of all power and how it was damaged in a laser battle. Maybe you could mention that earlier in the book.” At no point, should you read this first manuscript draft in front of your friend. Your face will surely give you away. Likewise, do not feel you have the right to be completely honest about its (many, many) faults. This process has been a huge emotional drain on your already jumpy writer friend. He has put a small part of himself, and a large part of his ego, out on the line in letting you read the product of his toil. It is not up to you to save the larger reading world from this literary monstrosity. This version is never going to get to a printer, an editor, or even an agent. It’s going to be rewritten, divided, moved around and eventually tossed. This is only the beginning. You and your writer have a long, long, long way to go.

“We have to help them, Mom. You said that the biggest problem in the universe is no one helps each other.” – Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace

I…. Want…. to…. Die!

By now, you probably know that your writer friend can be – at times – a bit of a drama queen. This personality feature, like their plasticity with facts, helps to make them wonderful writers. They feel things intensely. They can envision and then describe a glorious fabric, the rhythmic cadence of a foreign language, and the texture of a well-aged wine. They can also, however, imagine and then dictate the obviousness of how they will never be able to:

a) finish the book;

b) find an agent;

c) sell the damn book; or

d) ever be able to write anything worth reading again.

Each setback in the writing process can cause havoc on your writer’s emotional state, which is where you – the friend – come in to play. I once received a phone call from my fabulous writer friend that began this way:

“Hello?”

“I…want…to…die!” Followed by 45 seconds or so of muffled sobbing.

Through a few more tears and a few deep breaths, she explained the terrible tale. Having just been told that the publication date of her debut novel was to be pushed back six months, she was understandably upset. Instead of less than 56 days, she now had to wait almost nine months. Her agent had just called to explain that because her book was doing so well pre-release (foreign and movie rights had already been sold), the publishing company was really wanting to push her book as one of their Must Buy Reads in bookstores and airports throughout the US and Canada. They were also interested in rethinking both the title and the cover art, of which she had always hated, to really catch a person’s eye. They were seeing this book as a hot commodity to be nurtured. This was good. No, this was great!

And she knew it. But it meant that she had to postpone her already scheduled book launch party, her partially scheduled book signing trip, her hoped-for “day job” sabbatical and a host of other, smaller, details. Logically, she knew that this was in her writing career’s best interests. Emotionally, she was spent and in need of some venting and comforting. She just needed someone to talk her down.

Obi-Wan:   “You’re using her as bait.”
Anakin:      ”It was her idea. Don’t worry, no harm will come to her. I can sense everything going on in that room. Trust me.”
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones

Fodder

You, my friend, are fodder. That’s right fodder. Your writer friend, for all her devotion to you, will spend remarkable amounts of effort actively recording your every peculiarity, your most embarrassing moments and your most painful memories. These will eventually be filed on 3×5 cards and cross-referenced by peculiarity, any essential details and the setting (if interesting). Initially, however, these little tidbits are jotted onto the backs of envelopes during long-distance telephone calls, scribbled around a wet ring on a bar napkin and squirreled away in diaries away from others’ prying eyes. Your friend is likely only pretending to “quick a minute” write a check to the dog sitter while you’re having lunch. What she’s really doing is recording the way you cut up your banana so that you don’t have to touch it.

Are you an efficient packer, rolling socks and putting them into your shoes to save space in your carry on? It’s been noticed and may very likely make an appearance the next time a travel scene is written. Do you get into your pajamas the minute you get home because they’re the most comfy thing you own? Be warned, you not like what’s on the main character’s jammies when she gets home. Do you read 700 page history tomes for fun? Congratulations, you’ve just made the book!

Not all fodder is extreme though. Any of the thousands of little things that make you, your spouse, your kids or your pets into who they are is fair game. Do you always seem to have cherry cough lozenges in the bottom of your purse? Did you ever wash your newborn in the kitchen sink because it was easier on your sore back? Does your husband throw those individually wrapped mints to people in the back seat instead of handing them back? It’s all fodder and, if you’re lucky, you’ll find a little piece of yourself in the pages of her book one day.

Obi-Wan:  ”Do you believe what Dooku said about this ‘Darth Sidious’ controlling the Senate? It doesn’t feel right.”
Yoda:         “Joined the Dark Side Dooku has. Lies, deceit, creating mistrust are his ways now.”
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones

The Plasticity of Details

Upon hearing your writer friend tell a story in public, you will eventually be moved to announce (or, if you’re a really great friend, merely think), “That’s not what really happened.” The story you once knew so well, having been present or perhaps even personally involved in the events, is changed while you listen. Nearly all the details are fine, or maybe most of the details of the story are there, or perhaps only the spine of the actual event is sticking out for you to recognize. This can, for the unprepared, be disconcerting.

You need not fret as neither you nor he are in the process of losing one’s faculties. Rather, the very thing that makes someone a great creative writer is also what makes him a rather poor historian. They have imagination in abundance. What was once a good story about him renting a hotel room in Paris with a decided slant to the floor becomes in the retelling a) a hotel room with a slant so bad that the furniture had to be nailed down to keep it from sliding; b) a hotel room with a 20 degree slant that, if you weren’t paying attention (such as when you first woke up in the morning), would make you stumble into the sink; or c) a hotel so off kilter that when he opened a window, the breeze was able to move only one curtain, the second one hanging so far from the edge of the window.

Your friend, while not telling the literal truth, is not actually lying. He is spontaneously filling out the story into its best form, making it into what it could have been. While it was pretty surprising to catch one of my roommates covered in blue from ankle to knee, from another roommate’s pilfered bottle of Nair hair remover, it would have been far funnier if I’d had enough sense at the time (instead of thinking about it a day later) to hand her my own bottle and remind her, “Get that toe hair, too, while you’re at it.” So, in your own “that’s not what really happened” event, realize that he honestly remembers the event much as we see ourselves delivering that killer one-liner: as good (or bad) as it could have ever been.

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.”