Being Ethel to a BFF's Lucy Yields one Personal Essay after Another

When you've had a very close friend since you were five, and you're both now over 50, and you're married to men who have been each other's best friends since kindergarten, and when you are, like me, a writer of personal nonfiction, well—that BFF finds her way into your writing. A lot.

Since I'm not always sure she (and sometimes her husband) would be eager to be on the page with their real names in everything I write, sometimes she's Lenore. Anne. Laurie. Her husband is occasionally Jeff. It isn't important that anyone know which name is accurate. Except us.

"Us" for a long time were thought of, affectionately—and sometimes exasperatedly—by our four parents, relatives, neighbors, and teachers, as "Lucy and Ethel." When we were younger, the Lucy-and-Ethel moniker was just funny, and fun.

But recently, I had occasion—involving of all things, a snooty vendor with an overdue bill—to reflect back and realized that our Lucy-and-Ethel panoply was something that went far beyond comedy; it helped make me strong and confident, even now.

That's what I wrote in an essay for Purple Clover recently in an essay titled, "The Lucy and Ethel Years." Here are two excerpts:

"I played Ethel to Laurie's Lucy for years. For every harebrained scheme she devised—and there were dozens, maybe hundreds—I countered with calm, sensible reasons why we couldn't do any such thing. It was wrong. Slightly dishonest. Sneaky. Dangerous. Maybe a little bit illegal. For five minutes, I'd try to talk her out of whatever foolish thing she was proposing.

Then, I'd jump in and together we'd hatch the plan...

....When I think about the crazy, gutsy and dumb things the two of us did, it brings up more than fond memories; the Lucy-and-Ethel years taught me to read people, to figure out what to say or ask (or hide) at crucial moments, to understand who to snow, who to avoid, and with whom I could be honest. It also taught me that having someone by your side that you trust completely, and who feels the same about you, makes life's problems and challenges utterly doable."

 You can read the rest of it here.

Image: Wikipedia

When a Targeted Submission Fails: Rinse, Revise, Repeat

Not everything we write lands where we hope. I occasionally write essays for themed calls for submissions, especially for anthologies, and have had some success (10 thus far). But when the resulting essay is declined, there are decisions to make. Like every writer, sometimes I am tempted to forget about it. But not often. Because when I work hard on something, I like to salvage those efforts.

I try to remember what I advise my students: that the gift inside rejection (for something I wrote and submitted exclusively), is that I now have new material. Even if it requires a little (or maybe more than a little) revision, I have something to submit elsewhere.

Last July, I submitted an essay to a planned anthology to mark the 10^th anniversary of the mega-memoir, Eat, Pray Love in 2016. I learned in November that mine—along with some 1950 other submissions—was not accepted for what eventually became the book Eat, Pray, Love Made Me Do It.

I let many months go by, mostly because I was busy with teaching and other projects, but eventually realized that if I were going to place that essay, it had to be in 2016.

Fortunately, the original call had a word limit that coincided with what many mainstream online destinations look for in personal essay length. So I examined the content, and zeroed in on an angle that I hoped would help it sell: although Elizabeth Gilbert, author of EPL, was in her thirties when she rebooted her life, my own story of connection with the book was rooted in midlife, so I enhanced that aspect of the essay. When I sent it on its way, I aimed at venues with readerships in that age range and that seemed likely to include EPL fans. I emphasized in my pitch that the globally successful book was celebrating its 10^th anniversary.

That piece, eventually titled, "Happy 10^th Birthday Eat, Pray, Love: A Big Shout-Out to the Book that Inspired My Three Big Midlife Changes," was published in late August on Purple Clover, a popular site geared to midlife women. The site's tagline is: still crazy after all these years. It seems like a good fit for the piece, the paycheck is welcome, and I love knowing that my original efforts paid off, though in a different manner.

Later this fall, a similar story will play out when a much longer, more literary nonfiction narrative I originally wrote for Creative Nonfiction Magazine's 2015 call for works about the weather will be published by Harpur Palate, another journal where I'm happy to see my work appear. Lately, I've been seeing a number of well-written nonfiction pieces about weather popping up in many quality venues, and I've been secretly wondering if those traveled the same road, too.

Do you have pieces that you intended for one place that wound up in another? I'd love to hear your experiences.

Image - Fingers: Flickr/CreativeCommons-Katerha