on Jane Friedman site:

The first book coach I ever had was my college roommate, Bridget. Fate put us together in a tiny room in a remote freshman dorm—and for most of the rest of college, we never lived more than a few steps apart. Senior year, I hatched a scheme to write a series of linked narrative nonfiction pieces as an honors thesis. The topic was friendship—our friendship.

I had to make sure Bridget was OK with my writing about everything I wanted to write about, so I would turn in my typewritten drafts to her long before my advisor ever saw them. She would respond and react to them, reflect back to me what was working and what wasn’t, explain when I had gone too far in sharing a personal detail about her life, help me figure out a way around the hole when I took it out, ask me where the pages were when the pages weren’t getting written, and cheer me on as the stack of finished pages grew.