On Valentine’s Month: Love Letters to Writing

In his essay for Creative Nonfiction Magazine, the late and gifted writer Brian Doyle captures the tactile joy of writing:    

 "One of the things that we do not talk about when we talk about writing is the sound and scent and sensuality of it, the scratching and hammering and tapping, the pitter of pencils and the scribble and scrawl of pens…"

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More recently, in her 2022 commencement address to the Bennington Writing Seminars, the poet Mary Ruefle told the graduating students that “writing is who you are, not what you do.” 

Ruefle added:  

“Yes, think if of it, the beating human heart, you alone as an individual facing the page, the blank page; it can be scary, but the thrill you feel while writing must be greater than your fear of obscurity or oblivion.”

Ah yes. “the thrill you feel.”

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In 2015, I penned my own piece on the thrill of reading and writing and my love affair with the written word. Rather than choosing the third person, I went with an epistolary, or letter, format:

Dear Writing,

It’s Valentine’s Day. Or almost. So now it’s time to tell you what you’ve meant to me and how you’ve changed my heart and life.

Good love letters reminisce over those first sightings, those early flirtations and that heady free fall into real love.

So here goes …

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Read my complete love letter to writing here at Women Writers, Women’s Books.

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