Go ahead. John Steinbeck Me. I won't John Steinbeck you.

Dear Friend,

Remember Sonora Babb? The woman who gave John Steinbeck the idea, the notes, and the interview for The Grapes of Wrath without ever knowing it? And continued to meet with him under his guise of "helping out a beginning writer" only to later discover from her publisher that "there was only room for one novel about the Dust Bowl and the migration of the Okies," and by the time she'd completed her book, a well known author that they didn't even know was interested in the subject had mysteriously presented a completed work out of nowhere. Yeah. I remember your look. Face frozen in mid eye roll.

First, I miss you. Know that. Do you still write? I hope so. I've got a proposition for you.

Great idea for a Great movie on the Lifetime Network. OK. I know the threshold is super low. Check this out:

A Palestinian man and an Israeli man are best friends. They may or not have a case of the Love that Dare not speak its name. But they grow up, marry nice little women of their own nationalities, and have daughters. (Side note, here the temptation is going to be to use actresses who have eyebrows that are threaded or micro-braided instead of embracing the uni-brow. That's going to be a tough editorial decision. But know that I support the hairy rainbow.) Anyway, these men and their wives have daughters. And these men are still in conversation as polite friends that pretend that they never whispered "I wish I knew how to quit you" on a camping trip in a Wyoming wilderness. At some point, the Jewish man, who is a trusted high official in the Israeli government, has helped his still friend to get documentation for their family to pretend to be Jewish. They even have Shabbat suppers together and go to Synagogue, all for reasons of the need for safety and security that reach back several decades. The two men come up with a plan, because they notice their daughters are different, and maybe have a lot more in common with them then they'd have ever thought. So they reach back and arrange a marriage for their daughters. The daughters have know each other since they were little. They're friends, and becoming better friends. And they're warming up to the idea of an arranged marriage, since maybe that way they can be together. Then the Palestinian girl has her grandma die, and in the middle of all kinds of new questions and old truths, the family goes back to Gaza for the funeral. And while the family is there, the Israeli woman's father is charged with calling for an air strike that will pay back the Palestinians who liver there for some crime the Palestinians that don't live there committed. And the Palestinian girl's father is killed in the air raid. And then, you know. drama. And more drama. And a couple of commercials. And more drama. And then, they finally find their way back to one another. And the Jewish father is full of remorse. And he can't imagine forgiveness. So he goes to talk to his father, who is a respected Orthodox Rabbi. And his father says, "we don't say forgiveness here. We do forgiveness. And he performs the marriage for his granddaughter and the love of her life, even in doing so knowing that this will be his last act of any kind as a rabbi.

Why pick you? Yes, I know what you believe. Yes. I can understand how you feel. Yeah. I know. You made your choices. You think she made hers. So why you? Because here's what I know. I'm not asking you to think differently. I'm asking you to simply be who you are. Which is almost never simple.

You know the difference between well rounded characters and flat characters. When you write. Could it be-- might I suggest-- that the struggle isn't in your writing. It's in your living. Because the same person that can put beautiful prose on parchment tends to retreat to reaction when it comes to the people that surround her. Person=Problem. Stock Character. Something I don't like=Something I don't need. Stock Character. I don't understand=I can't love. Stock character. Flat characters are only appropriate if you're writing about per-pubescent girls. Isn't it strange how everything comes back to Atonement. And The Atonement? I have a feeling that people who love me even though they definitely don't love everything about me are going to take that penultimate sentence out in the edit. The reason Jesus came to earth, it could be argued, is that He was work-shopping the Book.

A good writer knows that seeing past the surface is the key to character development. A great writer knows that the best stories only come when you can actually see through the eyes of the other. Because understanding never comes from reacting to what we see on the surface. It comes from embracing what lies beneath. I know. You can't imagine that would happen. OK. We'll see.

If you accept, I'll be your researcher. I'll share my notes. You be Steinbeck. I'll be your Sonora Babb. We can have a chance to turn back history and do things differently. What's the opposite of misogyny? "That seems fair."

I humbly and patiently await your reply.

Thus spake,

me