The Presence of Person

A fellow writer of mine recently wrote a poem about the first year of her marriage and the challenges that arise when two people throw in their lot together.

There is a great deal of bravery in writing about those we love – those people closest to us – whether we love them or not. It is not just the bravery of putting such things on paper – of making a record of them, but the bravery due to what happens when we write. When we write we learn. And sometimes we uncover things we’d rather not know – things more difficult than those with which we initially sat down.

When we write about people – real or fictional – they become more real to us than when we started. We create them, or interpret them, and they become a thing from which we cannot look away. Our investment in them grows and they become integral to the engine of our story.

This is part of our superpower. We write and that which was elusive, only given a nod, occurred behind closed doors, is unveiled – it is illuminated and exposed.
And it is never the same again.