I am working like a fiend on this book and feel like an athlete that's training, or actually, make that running a marathon. I've never written at this pace in my life! Last week, the focus was on a chapter called Own Your Own Crap. (Tt was "Shit", but we changed it to "Crap" for the book. One major cuss word is probably enough!)Since there's a section in each chapter called "A Look Back from Us" where we each tell a story about that topic in our own words, Carol had supplied me with a long list of terrible memories, horrible impressions and old resentments. All about me.

The chapter talks about all the ways we keep it bad between us, but blame the other person. This is all too easy to do.  And gets you nowhere....

But hoowee, talk about fun to read! (She's already read my list, didn't phase her a bit.)

Believe it or not, it was fun to read though. I told her it was as if she'd lifted the lid of her head and let me eavesdrop inside. I *knew* a lot of these things already, because we've already actively talked about a lot of them. But it was another thing altogether to get it in a long list, all in one document.  : )

Can you imagine having this experience with somebody? Most of us will never do this with another human being, ever, in our lives.

She kept saying how horrible she felt writing all this stuff down. She felt guilty and it dredged up some awful feelings. I think it was very brave thing of her and I'm grateful she did it. It's the perfect material for the book - juicy, full of details - REAL. The stuff people can relate to.

It also really made me see how incredibly far we've come....

To be friends now, to have gone through some tough times together and come out the other side and then, to be writing this book together and dissecting all this stuff like it's a lab frog....

It's weird, but it's also good.

We're closer now than we've ever been and I think having done this bizarre thing together has created a unique bond that we'll always have.

I hope we can do this material justice!

And I hope this book ends up helping a lot of people create what we have.

If we can do it, after going from hating each other -- to this, then other people can do it too.

© 2008 Jennifer Newcomb Marine     All Rights Reserved