Ask Liz & Lisa is baaaack! Thanks so much for all of the great Q's you've sent so far. It's been hard to choose just one to answer! Be sure keep 'em comin'! Ask us anything! (Don't be shy- you know how much we love to TMI with you!) Email your Q to asklizandlisa@chicklitisnotdead.com and if we pick your question, we'll send you a fabulous book!
And today we picked a question from Wendy. Because we chose her Q, she'll be receiving a copy of She's Gone Country by Jane Porter. Feeling left out? Well you can leave a comment on this post and you'll be entered to win a copy of Ten Beach Road by Wendy Wax. We'll randomly select the winner after 6pm PST on Friday, June 24.
My question - and I am not sure if this has been asked before... I know you guys have been friends, like.. forever. But... even best friends fight, right? So, have you ever or do you have times when you are not talking to each other? Have you had a difficult time in your friendship. Or has it all seriously been roses?
~Wendy @ wall-to-wall books
Roses. Hmm. Not so much. Yes, we've been friends for evuh and evuh. Since Milli Vanilli and Tiffany were topping the charts. Since Ice Ice Baby was a cool song (well since we thought it was a cool song). And when you've been friends with someone for that long, you're bound to go through your ups and downs. And when you are BFFs, business partners and writing partners, there's almost no avoiding the occasional conflict. Very recently, there were "words" over the word, synopsis. More on that in a minute.
But we will say that for us, it's not the fact that we have conflict that matters. It's how we deal with it. And let's just say that process has evolved over the years.
The Bent thumb
In college, there was an argument over, gawd only knows what (a thumb war gone awry?), but someone's thumb got bent back and someone else charged out of the house and hid out in a movie theater all day watching The Fugitive. And by some sort of weird foreshadowing, someone wrote a humorous story (complete with pictures!) and taped it on someone's door as a peace offering.
The one-act play
While co-writing a one-act play for our theater class, we had a huge fight. We have no idea what the fight was over but it involved lots of expletives being thrown at each other and ended with something being actually thrown at Liz's state of the art word processor. (Yes, you read that right-word processor- we are that old!)
The separation
We'd gone to high school together, we'd gone to college together. We were Vice-President and President of our sorority together. Let's just say we'd been a little too close for a little too long. And we felt we'd merged into one person. Liz and Lisa, Lisa and Liz. Sometimes people just called both of us Lisa. So we agreed on the fact that we needed space. And we separated. And we did our own thing for a while. And when we eventually came back together, our friendship was stronger for it.
The door slam heard round' the world
Someone was postpartum and someone had just been dumped and we thought it would be a FABULOUS time to write the query for our first book, I'll Have Who She's Having! Now let's just that writing a query is a painful process even when the rest of your life is perfect. So imagine writing it when things are, well, not so perfect. We don't remember what started it (are you starting to see a pattern here?), but all of the sudden someone stomped out of the house and SLAMMED the door with all her might, waking up someone's husband and baby. Don't worry, we worked it out and eventually finished that damn letter.
The word synopsis
Very recently, we disagreed about the word synopsis. One of us likes the word, one of us doesn't. One of us insists on using it in just about EVERY post and one of us thinks it's impersonal. Then one of us thought that the best way to communicate her problem was to EMAIL the other about it. (I think you can see where this is going...) Cue four tense emails, a ten minute girlfight over the word synopsis followed by ten minutes of laughing about how freakin' LAME it was to be arguing about it.
So no, it isn't all roses. But the difference for us is that we are able to let things go. And it also helps to know the other person better than you know yourself. But the most important thing to remember is to just take a deep breath and LAUGH YOUR ASS OFF at the silly things that seem so important in the heat of the moment.
xoxo, L&L