Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes and always count their change when it is handed to them.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
Believe it or not, friendships are difficult to write in fiction. They can easily come across as forced, particularly if they involve too much explication and too many overt gestures of affection.
Sometimes you become friends with the characters you portray.
I have been lucky with writers. None have been real trouble. Some I never met. Some I meet only after the book is finished, and some, the easiest to get along with, are the dead ones. Most become friends.
As a novelist, I tend to know significantly more about my characters than I do about my friends.
Editors and their authors seldom form deep friendships for the same reason that psychiatrists and their patients keep their distance: The relationship requires candor that mixes poorly with intimacy.
Every friendship goes through ups and downs. Dysfunctional patterns set in; external situations cause internal friction; you grow apart and then bounce back together.
All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.
All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.
Choose an author as you choose a friend.