you're asking ME?

A friend just emailed me for advice about an article she's doing for an e-zine. She's an artist, and the comments she puts under the reproductions in her portfolio are profound and touching. Yes, I'm an experienced journalist, so I gave her some basic advice and offered to check her work when she's ready to send it off, but sheesh...

This woman has so much heart and maturity, so much insight, peace and presence in the moment that I can't imagine that her piece won't be absolutely poetic and inspiring. 

Some people are able to open up their hearts to the world in an  extraordinary way, and to put that into words that are simple, deep, and moving.  I find that quite often they are NOT writers, at least they wouldn't label themselves that, and they've perhaps never written anything for publication. But their words lift us up, open an experience to us, delight us, make us think and feel. I think the more we can drop our defenses, the better our writing is--the more we expose our nerve endings, the more real our fictional characters can be, and the deeper the experience for our readers.