Friday On Friday - "Friday Turns 100"

Words to live by.

I keep a notebook.

No, not a Mac Book, a notebook. The kind you write in. The paper kind. And a pen. I’ve been told I’m an old soul… fossil old.

And since I don’t even own an iPhone...

(choking gasp of horror over morning coffee)

Let me explain… no, there is too much… let me sum up.

Okay, whenever I get a random thought in my head... something that, for the merest moment of time, I like the sound of as it floats between my ears, I write it down. In the same notebook I use for work. Sideways, in the left-hand margin... so I won’t forget where I put it. Sometimes, these random thoughts end up in a story. Most times, they end up forgotten… tossed in a drawer, or worse yet (the horror…) under the bed (another column for another time). And sometimes, like bullets from a 9 mil in a drive-by, they get used all at once. And if you think you know me… and you will think you do, the longer you read me… then you know that these are (some) of my words to live by.


“I have no desire to be friends with my past.”

While, for many, the past can be looked back on fondly... first bike, first kiss, first car... for me, my past is looked back on for some other firsts… first stolen bike, first punch in the face, first death of a loved one. And while I would not trade any of the lessons learned from it, my past and I are not now, nor will we ever be, on good terms with each other. Every now and then, we pass each other on the street… and nod. And that’s enough. Because with every passing nod, another page in the notebook is filled.


“Talent doesn’t pay the bills, working does.”

Obviously not an original thought, but since when did a teacher like the past ever claim to be 100 percent original all the time? Still, this one is for the times (many) when the thought of sitting on my bony ass waiting for something better to come along became more than just a thought... and it took some kind of tragedy to shake me enough to start something, or stop something, that shoved a wrench into the gears of my creative machine. Hell, I hate working three jobs. But it beats starving. Yeah, and I’ll sleep when I’m published.


“Sometimes drunks tell the best version of the truth.”

So, after you finish reading this, have a few cold ones, read it again, and leave a comment… preferably on my blog, to reduce the chance of having me ask the publishers to take it down. When you do comment, please let me know exactly how many shots, pops, or rips you’ve had, so that I can rate your truthfulness by the volume of your consumption.

And remember, there are no wrong answers.


“Intimacy isn’t given… it’s earned.”

And people wonder why I don’t make many friends.

In a previous article, I covered the three kinds of “friendlies” every writer ought to know. This is the other side… the dark side… of that. For lack of a better term, they are, “the un-friendlies”. Part Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, part Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy, “un-friendlies” are those Twitter followers or Facebook friends you wish you’d never clicked “okay” for. Sure you could block them, or just try to ignore them, but sooner or later they will always come back... with a bunny. As I enter into this phase of my writing life, I will try to remember to be polite to everyone, and always, always keep my head on a swivel… so it doesn’t end up somewhere else.

And finally...


“Handshakes are for people who can’t afford lawyers.”

This should be self-explanatory. It’s the California version of, “get it in writing”. California has always lead the way in defining how to put a price tag on friendship (community property, “palimony”), and on the number of lawyers per capita in the United States. I have one friend who is an attorney, and while I did not run number 5 by him before I submitted this column to the editor (something to do with “billable hours”… I really didn’t understand it all), I do know that he would have to agree with me on this one. Off the record.

Bonus thought...

I will conclude this first official effort by explaining that this article is my 100^th published article for Broowaha.com. In saying that, I want everyone who just made the effort to follow this one all the way to its conclusion to know that it is my wish that we all, as writers… as readers… get what we wish for ourselves in this creative venture comes true even wilder and better than we ever could have imagined. But be careful what you wish for, because...


“If wishes were Unicorns, they’d shit rainbows.”

Copyright © 2011 Bill Friday

The White Paint Chronicles (#0002)

You never know where they’re going to come from.  They start as total strangers, then become people, who one day – whether you admit it or not – you cannot do without. 

They are… the “friendlies”.

This is a story about groupies.

That got your attention.  Don’t lie to yourself, you know it did.  Anyway, groupie stories are fun, and should just about write themselves… if you’re a writer without a soul.  Even more, if you’re a writer without a soul… who writes online.  Online, where disembodied voices whisper… saying things you want to hear… just as long as you say them back in just the right way.  Whispers that are never to be trusted, let alone believed… not when you crave honesty more desperately than your next orgasm.  Truth isn’t something you should have to pay for any more than you should have to pay for sex.  It should be expected, offered spontaneously and mutually and freely given, between those who supposedly share the deepest of bonds that could exist between consenting adults.  The mutual inadequacy… the fear... the greatest joy…

No, not sex you perv… writing.  This one’s about a different kind of groupie…  The “friendly”.

And this is the story of three.  

Those Who Know You Best

The one who knows you the best is, most likely, the one who reads you the least.  For them, it doesn’t matter how good… or how bad… a writer you are.  For them, it’s enough to know that you making it as a writer is a foregone conclusion… a given.  The thought that you won’t never crosses their mind, like a lot of things about your writing never do.  They know you, and because they know you, they already know what you know… that you’re a writer, whatever anybody says to the contrary.  Their lack of compliments, comments, critiques, random encouragements, or any other words outside the day-to-day reality that “this is who you are” and “this is what you do” is irrelevant.  You know it, they know you… therefore it must be true.  You wish they would, once in a while, take notice of what you do, but it’s been so long that you’ve decided it’s probably best just to let it go.  No point in ruining a friendship because you are so damn needy.

“Ain’t no thang,” you tell yourself.  One day, you’ll forget all this.  You won’t even remember the way you felt the first time you heard Marcus Mumford sing the words, “…you desired my attention, but denied my affections…”  And you’ll never remember how stupid you feel on those days you think this way… or how often.

Those Who Know You Least

“...You ARE and ALWAYS WILL BE a writer my friend. I see many people call themselves writers who barely write and don't even have a tenth of the talent that you have. You have mad skill. You have the disease!”

Portion of a comment at the end of the It’s Always Friday version of The White Paint Chronicles (#0001)

So says the friend I’ve never met. 

I don’t include the quote to make me feel better.  I include the quote to say that someone who knows me least, and only through a few words on a page… the “through a glass, darkly” kind of friend… can deliver this kind of unsolicited bump to a writer’s often bruised ego just when the desperate need of it is greatest.  Doubt, swallowed without hope, is the writer’s poison.  When swallowed together, they… the doubt and the hope… fill the writer’s soul with every emotion, every word, required to write again.

The existence of the post you’re reading (#0002) is proof of that.

Better still, that those words came from someone who would not know me if we stood next to each other in a ten-deep line at Starbucks, makes the impact of their words all the deeper.  And more lasting.

Those Who Know You Not At All

            “Blog like no one’s reading.”

                                                                        Agnes’ Pages

The other side of the coin.   The encouragement that comes from no one will know. 

I “met” Agnes by accident one day, surfing, on a site called Blog Catalog.  “Picking and clicking” I call it.  My blog is listed there, with uncountable thousands of other blogs.  I’ve picked up some pageviews by being active on the boards there, and every so often, I spend a little time “picking and clicking” blogs to read… mostly in the hope that others will pick and click mine.  A few months ago, I ran into Agnes’ Pages.  It was artistic and very finished looking… way more “polished and professional” than most of the BC blogs.  On the surface, it looked like a journal about a woman’s obsession with coffee and travel… which it is.  But after noticing just how many comments each entry was getting (and I mean dozens), I decided I had to find out what the traffic jam below each post was all about.  Turns out, the little blog that started out as random posts about ugly shoes and Starbucks Via drinks, had morphed into a personal journal about a young woman whose husband was dying of cancer.

I finished the entire blog, comments and all, in one night.

In among all the happy and the heartbreak, the hope and the hopelessness, one quiet line from one tiny little entry ran me over like a truck does rabbits on the highway,

“Blog like no one’s reading.”

Best words I ever read about writing… spoken by a “friendly” I’ll never know.  Life, like writing, should be that simple.

Copyright © 2011 Bill Friday