Writing About Friendship
by Melissa Ford
Writers are supposed to write about what they know, right? And what do we know better than our friendships? There were the friendships our parents set up for us; the children of their friends that we were expected to share our toys with simply because our parents wanted to hang out. (Yes, I am guilty of passing along this fine tradition to my own children.)
There were the first friendships we formed on our own on the playground. The friends that broke our heart or didn’t return our affection or were too clingy. The ones that dumped us. The ones we drifted away from. The ones that saved our lives. The ones that we whispered our secrets to in the dark during a sleepover.
There are the old friends that we’ve been together with for more years than we haven’t been friends, and the new friends that we’ve intensely connected with in the last year or two.
See? As a subject, it’s pretty ripe for the write-what-you-know rule.
But being close to the subject is tricky. No one wants to see themselves show up on the page, and it’s bad form to dissect your friendships in front of an audience. Sometimes we can’t really explain why we’re friends with someone, or why we’re not. We may not know what we did right or what went wrong.
Sometimes friendships defy words, though I never stop trying to write about the topic.
Life from Scratch is about a woman named Rachel finding herself after the dissolution of a marriage. She finds her voice through the act of writing but also seeing what she wants reflected in her relationship with her best friend, Arianna. Where do we first learn how we want to be loved? Our friendships. And it’s where we constantly return to measure our relationships.
LIFE FROM SCRATCH is Amazon’s monthly deal for March for only $1.99. Read it with a friend and discuss it over coffee. Don’t forget to tell your friend how you could never get by without her.
