Profile Rough Draft Process Writing

Ahh.  This piece has been so difficult for me to write, yet so, so great to report.  I have seriously loved every minute of learning about my best friend.  Our interviews have been nothing like any interview I have ever conducted before.  They are hilarious.  They are heartbreaking.  They all full of inside jokes and profanity and food!  Only Laura would chomp away on some kind of microwavable pasta dish while we chat charismatically about her Islamic life, then shoo away her roommates because she's having "a formal interview."  Ha!  It's also been lovely to talk to her mom about the conversion and hear her side of the story.  What's crazy is that Jenn opened up to me more than I could hope for and shared an intensely personal version of how the conversion effected her job, her personal life, and her mental health.  It's a story that I doubt Laura knows.  If I could, I'd love to write another profile, just on Jenn during the conversion period.  She gave me some really fascinating stuff that just doesn't have a place in a profile on Laura.  The reasons why this piece has been so hard to write are A) I have SO much information and B) I want to do justice to this story.  I want to tell the story well and tell it for my friend.  I feel that there is so much personal investment in this piece that it's almost giving me writer's block.  I think that I need to decide what I really want this story to be about and then I'll need to go through all of my notes more thoroughly and nix the parts that are excessive or irrelevant to my story.  I'm so excited to keep reporting and writing this piece though.  I know it's it pretty poor shape at the moment, but I really do have high hopes for it once I figure out my direction a bit more.