Blog #2 My Writing Friends

Hemingway valued the friends who surrounded him early in his writing life. I am grateful for those who have walked along side me and prodded me to move forward. I needed to know that I should follow this writing thing and that is was purposeful.

I met Anne Richards in the hallway between our offices in the English department of KSU three years ago. Despite the gulf that separated us politically we grew to be friends. I gathered courage early in our friendship to read ask her to read a story I had worked on over 10 years ago and wanted to officially lay it to rest. After I had an expert’s opinion, I could put it away forever because she would confirm that I was not a fiction writer.

She returned my Word document filled with track changes. Instead of the negative comments I expected, I was struck by her emotional response to my story. She told me how it made her feel – how it captivated her. Her final comment made me laugh, “Lisa, you are a story teller but get an editor!” So I did.

My second writing friend is really two separate women. Bending the rules, I will call them a composite character. We will call them Callie Sue. (Callie Brown and Sue Cochran). Graduates of the MAPW program and worked with me as student interns I learned to depend on them to make me look good but never making me feel bad because I was not sure of my grammar. Callie Sue never morphed into “grammar snobs” and belittled my ignorance of everything grammar. They gently pushed me to be more careful when I wrote and be better at placing those pesky semi-colons in just the right places. Old enough to have been their mother (a teenage mother) they gently edited my work with love.

My third writing friend is not a writer at all. I would call Ella my soul-mate, but she has a better soul than I. She is a patient sounding board and sees the better person I want to be. She has always believed in me as a writer and that is every writer needs someone who sees the end result and can help you form the story with as much passion as the writer.

I ask Ella before writing this, why she encouraged me so much she said, “You are most alive when you are writing. You have a purpose in writing. You don’t write to have your name on a book, you write because you want to help people through your writing. You have helped people with your writing.”