Laura with Sandhya and Krishna at their wedding in India.
At a writing workshop in Taos, I was drawn to the stories of a woman from India. Sandhya wrote lyrically about aunties wrapped in silk saris, serving tea and sweets to suitors. I was from New York; my writing was sassy, bitter-funny. My aunties weren't wrapped in silk ("Polyester is so much more practical"), and instead of coconut, cashew and cardamom treats, they served chopped liver and corned beef on rye.
Our styles and content were worlds apart, but we admired each other's writing. After the workshop, we decided to become writing buddies. Sandhya was living in New York and I in California, so once a week we emailed stories to each other, then spoke by phone to give each other feedback.
Agreeing to exchange our work by a certain day added just the pressure I needed to spur me to write and finish stories.
Writing is a solitary act and one of the best ways to get support and feedback is from a buddy or partner. A writing buddy can tell me what she finds funny, awkward, confusing or brilliant. She can help me find the perfect verb, choose between two leads I'm considering, or advise when to cut or expand. She can also tell me her emotional response -- was she moved by a passage to laughter or tears?
At the heart of a writing relationship are mutual respect and encouragement. It's important for me to work with someone I consider a peer, whose feedback I value. We frame our comments kindly, often as an "I" statement or a question. Instead of saying "This makes no sense," I might say "I'm not sure what you're trying to say here," or I might make a short comment with a suggestion: "This sentence seems long. Maybe break into two."
If we catch typos, that's a bonus, but a writing partner isn't a proofreader. For Sandhya and me, our goal was to help each other keep writing and move our writing to the next level. We shared prompts to generate free writes and gave feedback to hone our stories.
A few years after we'd begun writing together, I flew to India for Sandhya's wedding. In the immortal words of Humphrey Bogart at the end of Casablanca, "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
Writing prompt: Start with the line "I want to be alone."
Copyright © 2011 by Laura Deutsch (Text and photos)
To visit Sandhya's blog, click here.
