Bagging Your Writing BFF — Tips ‘n Tricks
I met my writing BFF in a night class, one that promised to help us finish our novels. There were a dozen or so others in the class, all with manuscripts in various stages of completion. We were led by a cool South African writer who had had several mystery and crime novels published.
The students were writing all kinds of interesting things, but of course, you like what you like. You like WHO you like. I made a few good writing chums in that class, but my soon-to-be Writing BFF was quiet and kind of messy-looking (like me). She was doggy (like me). She was horse-y (not like me). Then she volunteered to go first in reading out a chapter of her novel and I admired her bravery— although actually, I don’t think she really understood that by “sharing” her work, our instructor meant she’d be reading it to the rest of us for our comments. She’d brought lots of copies. She looked shocked when the instructor asked her to go ahead and start.
She cleared her throat and read us the first chapter of this wild YA novel, with Irish explorers and a parallel North America and technology and a love story — not at all like what I was writing, but the kind of story that cemented my need to be her friend instantly. Girl can WRITE.
We started sitting near the same corner of the room every week. We chatted during the breaks, complimenting each other on our work.
One of the more useful concepts our teacher shared was the acronym 3FD, which stands for Finish the Effing First Draft. There were only a couple of people in the class who were even close to 3FD-ing, despite what the course title promised. A subset of us began to gather outside the classroom at the close of the evening to discuss next steps.
I invited three of the lurkers to come for a writing session at my house. I come from a big family, from a neighborhood full of kids, and a school where all of the real business was transacted on the playground. I know how to organize a group.
Two of them showed up. We drank tea and ate biscuits, and because the other two are British and I didn’t want to be “that” American woman, I wasn’t sure how much preliminary chit-chat would have to happen before we could actually get down to business. I’d participated in some NaNoWriMo write-ins, and found them frustratingly lacking in action. I needed to get some writing done that day but I didn’t want to push.
But after a very little while, my soon-to-be writing BFF said, “Right. Should we work?” She owns her own company and is a competitive horsewoman. She has a kid, and she and her partner are renovating their house. She’s the most efficient compartmentalizer of time and focus that I’ve ever seen. Girl came to WRITE.
[Pause in real time for a break with my writing BFF. I tell her I’m writing about the first time we wrote together, and she was the whip-cracker. She laughs and says, “Boss bitch.” We stretch and reach for cups of tea gone cold.]
But it’s not bitchiness, or bossiness that make us work so well together. Whenever we get together to write we follow the same pattern as that first time. A little catch-up, cups of tea to keep us company, then we buckle down to an uninterrupted block of writing time (usually about 45 minutes). When the timer goes, we stop, or sometimes we keep going if we’re in “flow.”
Inevitably one of us will say, “If we could write together every day like this, we’d be so much farther along!” We get a lot more work done when we’re in the room together than when we’re shoe-horning our writing into our regular days.
Part of it might be that we’ve set aside dedicated time to write, and part of it might be what social scientists call the “mere presence” effect — having another person in the room, whether they’re a spectator or just a disinterested bystander, will improve your performance on just about any task.
(If you’re a behavioral science wonk, you might like this classic article about the mere presence effect from the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/22584/0000132.pdf)
I think it’s a little more than mere presence, of course. Since we met in that class my writing BFF and I have been to book events and conferences, met each others’ families, and read each others’ work many, many times and listened to all kinds of feedback — positive and constructive — from each other. We’ve achieved a level of trust and comfort. There’s no possible way that one of us could be playing Candy Crush while the other worked on her novel. When we get together, we write.
I have more to say about the Care and Feeding of Your Writing BFF, and will write a separate piece about that. For now, here is a summary of steps to follow as you stalk and ultimately bag this most coveted of writer relationships:
1. Take a cheap, evening writing class at your local college or university.
I’ve taken a bunch and am always amazed at the interesting people who turn up at these! You’re bound to click with one or two.
2. You’re going to have to talk to people, though.
Usually these classes require some amount of sharing, so if someone writes something that intrigues you, tell them. Maybe this will open the door to buddy-ship. Let it develop naturally, though.
3. You may have to make the first move.
Ask the person to meet you at a coffee shop that welcomes writers. If that feels too one-on-one for you, invite several and see who shows up. If you live in a biggish town or city, your local library or NaNo chapter might have a group that meets already, and you can worm your way into it. Or start your own.
