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I’m about to write something–I won’t know what to call it until it grows up–about someone whose life has captivated me for ages. It is daunting to write about another person, someone who lived and breathed, someone who loved and was loved, whose life mattered. This is not fiction, not time travel, but it is a journey across time and space. I bring to this task a big bag of tricks I learned in graduate school, my roadmap and compass, but I need more than just a sense direction. I need to be truthful.
But how do I be truthful and honest about a woman who was funny, intrepid, generous, loving, ready for adventure, and yet at times, colossally difficult, stubborn, high-minded, and sometimes prudish? A woman who was both ordinary and exceptional, who conformed and rebelled, who inspires me because she looks at me from the shards that remain of her life and tells me to tell her story.
Do I step back, gain distance and perspective? Or do I step in? Are there boundaries, places that are off-limits? Where am I allowed and where am I not welcome?
A friend, a writer, asked if I planned to put me in the book and I nearly gasped at the thought. “No matter how you dive in or tiptoe around it, you can’t avoid being not only on every page, but in the ink itself.” I am in the story already. I’m on every page, with every stroke of the pen.