Sliver of ice
17/07/2011
I had a ha! of recognition when I read this guest post by essayist and poet Ashleigh Young. After watching her father fall through a disintegrating chair, she has to fight the compulsion to immediately write the episode down. So often when something awful or embarrassing happens, part of me is already shaping it into a story, already viewing it as ‘material’. I don’t seem to be able to switch that part of my brain off. Some people are writers because they have an important story to tell; perhaps I am a writer because I can’t help arranging all those little episodes that ought to be forgotten into narrative arcs.
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LET ME BE FRANK 
To write about it is the only way to stop you from throwing yourself of a precipice. I wish I had, had that option. Drink is another option favoured by some, but my mother’s “never drink alone” admonishment saved me from that path. One wonders how we make it though.