Sometimes we forget why we write. The work is so hard, it’s so difficult to make a living doing it, and then there are those thickets of doubt we have to wade through on the way to our pen or computer. Are we any good at it? Why break our hearts over this impossible task? Who cares if we write? There’s also the exposure, the stripping yourself bare that’s necessary to tell the story you need to write. Granted sometimes it can be exhilarating and satisfying to write, but those of you who are writing something serious and close to the bone know what I’m talking about.

We need to look at why we read to understand why we write. At 3:00 am this morning I was once again dipping into A Year of Magical Thinking and Joan Didion was putting into words what I was feeling. Gabri Ferrar, an Episcopal priest who was part of the memorial service for R., told me that I’d be crazy and fragile for a year, and then still crazy and fragile but not quite so much. This was the most comforting thing that I heard when R. died. Because I was – and am – crazy and fragile, and to know that this is okay, this is normal is a gift. So when Joan Didion writes: “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it……Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaningless itself.”    To read this is also a gift.

When we write our stories with honesty and generosity about our lives, and with meticulous care for our craft, we are giving the world a gift. We’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

I have three students I’m thinking about this morning who are going through painful and difficult times right now, and I want to tell them to take notes, pay attention, and write about it.