‘The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.’
Alan Bennett, The History Boys.
When someone – even one person – lets you know they’ve been reading your words and that the words have struck a note with them, it somehow makes all the work worthwhile. Writing, and even publishing, can feel like shouting into the void, but it only takes one person to read and make a connection.
So if you’ve read something that really chimes, that moved you or made you say to yourself: ‘I thought I was the only one who ever thought that’, why not find a way to tell the author or the poet? In addition, tell your real-life friends and social media contacts.
There are lots of ways to do it these days – and the writer will thank you.
