this is a response post to Date a Girl Who Reads, which was a response to Date a girl…something else… I don't remember.
Date a girl who writes. She's hard to find because she's the one who stands in the corner of the room watching other people from a distance. She's the one who searches their faces and watches their body language. She stands close enough that she can hear but far enough away so that she won't be seen. She's a master at invisibility, and all the smart girls know she's the best at eavesdropping. They go to her for the gossip. She knows who is in love with who just by watching them.
You'll be a lucky man if you find her. She's the one with a journal in her hand, a notebook in her purse, scrap paper in her car, and pencils in her back pocket. she's always scribbling something, praying it won't evaporate before she gets it down onto paper. and because she's always scribbling, she's always looking down, and that's why you never noticed her before.
if you're lucky, you'll find her at a library or in a park or at a coffee shop or in an airport, drinking coffee and watching people or typing furiously at her computer. If you see her looking at you, look back and wait.
if she looks away she doesn't want to be interrupted and she doesn't want you to notice her, so pretend you don't. but if you can get her to look at you and not look away, she wants to talk to you. she's targeted you, pursuing you, inviting you. once she catches your eye, once she hears your voice that first time, she begins her profile. she's the one who will have your character in 10 seconds and have you completely profiled in 10 minutes.
after two weeks she'll know you better than you know yourself.
if you catch her muttering to herself, don't feel awkward, she's talking with the characters in her story, probably arguing about what happens next.
don't lie to her because she knows. she can see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice, sense it in your energy field. she pays attention to every detail of your every word and if you're not careful, she'll ask the question that strips your lie away and you'll be humiliated.
so tell the damn truth.
If something is wrong, you may as well tell her because she'll figure it out. When something is wrong, you may as well tell her because otherwise she'll jump to the most absurd, most outlandish, most creative but ridiculous possibilities anyone could ever come up with, and when the truth comes out and she tells you what she thought, you'll remind her she's crazy, and she'll remind you that she knows this because of the voices, and you'll both laugh and hug and go on with life.
It's easy to shop for a girl who writes: office supplies like sticky notes and pencils, calendars, and especially beautiful journals will bring her immense joy because she knows that blank paper is the beginning of a new person, a new life, a new world. and holding that blank notebook in her hands lets her feel the power she knows exists inside her soul.
If you find out she's upset, don't ask her why, just let her cry until she hands you her journal and goes to stand by the window until you finish reading her most recent entry. She could never tell you what was wrong with her mouth because her soul is in her hands. once you read that entry, skip back in her journal and read the parts about you, because if she handed you her journal and walked away, it means she wants you to read it. she wants you to know that she dreams about becoming your only love every night, and that she has the whole thing planned out.
then once you know the plan, carry it out. she'll play along.
she'll write the wedding invitations, and the baby announcements, and stories for your children. she'll write you letters in your lunch every day and put sweet sensual notes on your pillow in the evenings. she'll ramble on and on as you take long walks along the beach and tell you all about a world that doesn't exist, and people who were never born and will never die and whom she loves as much as she loves your children, because her characters are just more of her children.
don't feel like you didn't help create them because chances are, if you love a girl who writes, there's a piece of you embedded in every hero, and a piece of herself in every heroine. you can sleep at night knowing that even after you both die, you'll both continue to live together in everyone else's minds through her books and stories, and you can live a thousand nights in stories that never end.
<3
