Thinking about my friend

Hi all. Cheyenne here again.

The Editor asked me to make a post for today, since she has been laid up and a bit sick for the last little bit. She's over it now, aside from a sore throat, but she won't be at the house much today. So, you get me instead.

Which I know is a thrilling prospect for you.

The other day, while we were talking a bit, we hit upon one reason why we get along so well, a facet of our friendship that neither of us had ever considered before. Beyond being each other's shoulder to cry on, beyond being contemporaries, beyond being fellow Orthodox Christians, beyond considering ourselves siblings, we are writing buddies – and while that is something that could probably be argued that we should have already known, it only just dawned on us the other day.

As statements go it is exceedingly true. We talk about stories and poems we've written or that we are thinking about, we read pieces to each other, and we provide honest commentary on what we hear or read, beyond the simple 'like it / don't like it' reactions. We talk on occasion about writing itself, and we share thoughts that we find about writing made by other authors and writers on the Internet. We suggest books to read and music to write by, we shore up each other's confidence, and we point out things we are doing wrong.

Some of this we kind of take for granted in a way. When we write a new story or a particularly good poem – or one that we aren't sure works – we can just assume that the other will listen and comment on it. It's something of a given. I give her stories a quick editorial read, looking for odd word choices, weird spelling, strange grammar, and any sort of point in the overall plot that I think I could fit a decent sized truck through – and she does the same for me. We both bring different things to the picnic – The Editor, for instance, has more practice looking at things from a literature student's perspective than I do, and she can analyze and divine meaning better than I can (for now, at least) – but that's the beauty of the whole thing. We're two distinct people, of two distinct minds, with two distinct wells of experience to draw upon when we write and when we read, but somehow, when it comes right down to it – we're both on the same wavelength when it comes to words and writing.

And like good buddies of any stripe, we have a friendly competition or two going. So far, she has more raw submission attempts than I do, but I have more published work than she does. Who's winning?

I say we both are.