Students sometimes tell me that they’re waiting for someone to die before they feel they can write their story. They say this sheepishly, guiltily. As if, in some way, they’re wishing for that person to expire, already, so they can get on with the business of writing about them. I try to liberate my students from these tortured thoughts by telling them that they may as well just start now, because it can be more difficult to write about the dead than to write about the living. The dead can’t fight back. The dead have no voice. They can’t say: But that isn’t how it was. You’re getting it wrong.
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