The elephant in the room

The elephant in the room, the open secret, the thing that everyone sees but nobody talks about, is prime material for a book.

It's a relief to read about, a relief to write about. It's scary to approach, and liberating to touch.

If we try to write around it, we may end up with an elephant-shaped hole in the story. Everyone knows there's something missing, something important we're not mentioning.

I once scribbled this in one of my notebooks: "You must write about the thing you must not write about."

This may be one reason people started writing in the first place: to name the elephants lurking in the corners.