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Interview with the Author Royane Real about her new book: “Guide to Finding Friends Making Friends, and Keeping Friends” October 2004
Christine: I interviewed you recently about the book you wrote to help people become smarter. I read it and really enjoyed it and found it amazing.
Royane: Thank you, Christine. That’s good to hear.
Christine: Now you have written a book on a totally different kind of topic, all about how to make friends. Isn’t it quite a big jump from writing about how to improve the way you use your brain, to writing a book about how to make friends?
Royane: You’re right Christine, it is quite a jump. But at the time, I really wanted to have a big change in what I was writing about.
After I’d finished writing the book about how to improve the way your brain works, I knew I still wanted to keep on writing, because writing is my passion as well as my profession, but I knew I wanted to do something completely different.
Originally I thought I would just dash something off very quickly about friendship, something that I thought wouldn’t require too much work. So I started to write about the joys of friendship. I thought it would be easy, that I could get it done in a couple of months. That I would just write about how great it is to have friends. I had my first draft ready in just six weeks.
But then I started to think, I want this book to be really useful to people, otherwise why would anyone want to read it? So I started to work on it a lot more, putting in a lot of ideas that people could actually use to improve their friendships, and increase the number of friends that they have, if that’s what they want to do.
So I changed the book to become much more helpful, so that it if you’re someone who wonders, “where am I supposed to meet friends, what do I talk about, what do I say?”, it will give you answers.
Personally I have been very shy at times in my life, and it has taken me a lot of work to overcome it, so I decided to put in a lot of information that would be useful if you’re a person who happens to be shy.
If you’re like me, you can use ideas about how to start conversations with new people, that kind of thing. How to have more confidence, how to be less tongue-tied. So now, this book has a lot of good information that you can use if you happen to be shy, or if you are worried about getting rejected. It will help you.
If you’re someone who doesn’t have a lot of friendships, you might also suffer from depression and self esteem problems. So I put in a lot of information to help you with that.
I started to ask around and I found out that there’s a lot of people who don’t really have a lot of good friends, and yet they want to have friends, and they don’t understand why it’s not happening, because they think, “Well I’m outgoing and friendly, I’m not shy, so why don’t people want to become my friends?” And this is very common.
So if you are a person wants to have more friends, and who is already confident and outgoing and has no trouble talking to others, I put in more information about what might be the reasons people don’t seem to want to be friends with you, and what you can do about it.
Christine: I haven’t had a chance to read your new book about how to make friends yet, mostly because you haven’t given me a copy yet (hint, hint!), but it sounds like it’s got a lot of really good information.
Royane: It was very satisfying to me as a writer to see how this book improved as time went on. But then, I really did put a lot of work into it, to make it the best it could be.
The book kind of expanded outward from this core of originally being about the benefits of friendship, and then expanding to teaching you much more about how you can actually have more friends and better friendships in your life.
And one thing I found in my research is that it’s actually harder for many people to have a satisfying social life nowadays than it used to be. People used to have more of a built in sense of community, families used to be more stable, jobs lasted longer. Now you have to in a lot of cases, really work at having good friendships. And some people can use some help in doing that.
Christine: Who do you think would benefit most from your book?
Royane: I had my friend Margaret review one of the early drafts of the book, back when I was still calling it “How to Overcome Being Lonely”.
She said my book had lots of great information. But, Margaret told me, “If I saw this book in a bookstore, I would never pick it up, because it has the word ‘lonely’ in the title, and I already have lots of friends and I have great social skills, and I’m not lonely, yet I still learned a lot from this book. I think this book would be great for everybody.” She told me I should aim this book at everybody, not just shy or lonely people.”
Because of what Margaret said to me, I had to rethink my whole concept again of what the book should be, and who could benefit from reading it.
I have now written this book so that it’s equally useful to you if you are a person who is shy and lonely, and if you are a person who makes friends easily, and if you are a person who is maybe somewhat aggressive in dealings with others.
Christine: It sounds like this project grew far beyond being a little book you could dash off in six weeks.
Royane: Yeah, it ended up being way longer. I originally thought this book could be quickly written in about two months, and it took almost another year to finish it.
I’ve seen so many ads on the Internet that say--write your own e-book in just seven days! Well, I don’t know how any one could do that and still offer a book that’s any good.
Part of the reason this book took me so long to write was because I want to make sure that all the writing was really clear and easy to understand, that nobody would trip over the sentences.
But I also felt like, every idea I had, every sentence I wrote, I had to run it through my heart, and ask myself, does it feel right, does it feel true in here?
Is it wise? Is it compassionate? And I kept having more ideas, and more incidents would happen in my life, and I would realize here’s something that could go in my book, because it’s stuff that happens between people.
Christine: What do you mean? Can you give some examples?
Royane: Even when I thought the book was finished, I’d get new ideas, or things would happen and I would incorporate them into the book.
For example, I was visiting someone who was a long time friend, and she wouldn’t talk to me. Lots of things from that visit ended up in my book as examples of what not to do if you want to keep your friendships.
Another time, I happened to be walking through the lobby of a hotel, and a man who was walking towards me said hello, but he didn’t look at me or smile at me. I don’t know how often people do that, but I started to think about this incident. I realized what a difference it would make to just add a smile and a bit of eye contact. That incident alone turned into several pages in the book.
Then my friend Chris told me that a couple who had been long time friends, suddenly stopped calling with no explanation. That set me to thinking about why sometimes friendships die out mysteriously, even when you think they are working.
Christine: Are friends very important to you?
Royane: Yes they are. When I was young, I was extremely, extremely shy. I didn’t have any social graces. So everything I know about friendship, I really had to learn from experience, trial and error, and I don’t take any of my friendships for granted. In a lot of ways, this is the book I wish I’d had when I was twenty.
One of the things that I am in awe of is that when you have a really deep, true, long lasting friendship, there is such a mystery at the heart of it. Many of the most valuable friendships I have had in my life are with people who look like they would have nothing in common with me. They are from different generations, different cultures and backgrounds, and sometimes have totally different interests. And yet there is something very deep in the friendship that works.
And I don’t think you can predict that. Some of the other books I’ve read about how to create friendships, they say, look for people who are a lot like you. And I don’t completely agree with that.
I think that sometimes you don’t know which qualities will end up being important. We often make superficial judgments, and shut out people that might have been wonderful friends. I think you have to be open to the possibility of friendship from anywhere, because you don’t always know in advance who you can have that connection with.
Christine: Well, thank you for your time, Royane. It’s been very interesting as always. You’ve given me a lot of food for thought. Good luck with your latest book!
Royane: Can I add just one more thing Christine before we wind up?
Christine: Sure.
Royane: After I finished writing this book about friendship, I realized there was lots of information in the middle of the book that was specifically about how to make conversation.
I came to realize that you might be a person who doesn’t want to read a whole book about making friends, but you can still use some help on how to carry on a conversation. So I pulled together all the information about making conversation that is in the friendship book and now it’s also available as a short little report all on its own. It’s being offered at my website for anyone who just wants help improving their conversation abilities.
It’s called Your Guide to Making Friendly Conversation and it’s available at my website.
Christine: Well, thank you for your time, Royane.
Royane: Well thank you for this interview!
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