Tag Archives: date a girl who reads

Date a Girl Who Writes

Posted on by
20

Recently, I posted Rosemarie Urquico’s marvelous essay entitled “Date a Girl Who Reads.”

This is meant to be its companion essay, written by yours truly, Jackie Lea Sommers, entitled “Date a Girl Who Writes.”  Enjoy! 

Date a girl who writes.

You know the type—she’s the one in the corner booth with her earphones in, battering the laptop keys to high heaven.  The one who, despite appearances, is not really in the restaurant at all, but in a world of her own making, or else with one foot in and the rest of her looking up a synonym for blue and debating whether the sky is more of a cobalt or an indigo.

A girl who writes can take you on a date to Venus and have you back in time for dessert.  Five minutes with her, and she will usher you through the gates of philosophy and religion and metaphysics.  She’ll make an explorer out of you.  You’ll need to run to catch up.

Creativity rolls off her in waves.  She can think of beautiful ideas and make them real.  She is quirky, fun, witty, and wise.  She notices everything, and all of it matters to her.  Can’t you see her eyes flickering from the old couple playing cards in the corner to the whipped cream melting into her cocoa?  She also just memorized every detail of your sigh, and now she is thinking of the name of an obscure artist and of the waitress’s accent.

Date a girl who writes because she is observant and smart, and what is sexier than an incredible vocabulary?  Think of how many different ways she’ll be able to tell you she loves you.

Writers are quirky, strange, fascinating people.  You will never be bored if you date a writer.  In fact, your life with her will be a wild adventure.  The highs will be a pleasure, and the lows will remind you that you are alive and that truth and excellence matter.

Date a girl who writes.  She’s funny, a storyteller; people are drawn to her at parties.  But you’ll be the one who brought her, and think how proud you’ll be!  Every interesting thing you do or say will go immediately into her notebook and crop up somewhere in the future—a lasting posterity.  You’ll never have to buy a cheesy greeting card again.  All you’ll need to do is write a heartfelt message; she prefers when things don’t rhyme.

While it’s true that sometimes it will seem you’re taking the backseat to people and situations that aren’t real, she still loves you.  If you want to bring her back to where you are, wrap your arms around her and ask about her draft.  Ask questions and listen carefully to her answers.  If you help her out of her writing rut, trust me, she’ll reward you.

Date a girl who writes because she knows that the best stories make you laugh and cry, and so your romance will be infused with amusement and passion, jokes and joy.  She makes the connections you can’t, looks for lessons in life, makes sense of the chaos.

If you date a girl who writes, you can be confident that she will work at your relationship—she is used to second, third, and seventeenth drafts without giving up.  She willingly returns to conflict day after day.  She won’t leave when you fight—she knows the climax comes before the denouement.

Bring your A-game.  Remember that she has probably already dreamed up the most incredible Prince Charming, one who is tall and has gray eyes, irrational fears, strong arms, and a twisted sense of humor.  If you want to compete with her protagonist, you’re going to have to step it up.

It will be worth it.

Because when you date a girl who writes, the two of you will happen to life and not the other way around.  She will teach you how to make a moment extraordinary, how to appreciate this beautiful world spreading its arms to you both in majestic invitation.

Date a Girl Who Reads

Posted on by
6

Date a Girl Who Reads by Rosemarie Urquico

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent.  Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.