On a retreat in Texas once, I heard Frederick Buechner say that he writes to people he loves and who really know him. “You use your real voice with those who you live,” he said, “and you cannot be phony with those who know you well.”
Since the change encounter with Ms. Betts and the weekend with Mr. Buechner, I have never even considered writing to an audience. An audience is somehow faceless and forbidding to me. Whenever I try to write in the direction of an audience, the work comes out flat and forced. The only real way to write, at least for me, is to write to people I know and people I love.
– Robert Benson, from “Dancing on the Head of a Pen”
