ROME (Reuters) - Domitilla Stefanini first wrote a letter to her husband declaring her love 18 years ago. Now she is writing another love letter to him, but this time she has enlisted the help of ghostwriter Micol Graziano.
For 70 euros ($85.90) Graziano, a 39-year-old journalist, interviews people who want to write love letters and then drafts the letter for them. Her clients include men and women, people who are gay and straight, married and having affairs.
"Today, to write a love letter is revolutionary," said Graziano, who produces around six letters a month. She said she does not know if her clients tell the recipients they had help in composing the handwritten notes.
"I try to comprehend their sensations, their emotions, and then I transcribe them," she said. "The planet's great leaders have ghostwriters."
For Stefanini, 44, the letter was a way of rekindling her marriage.
"Like all couples, we had a bad patch. I said to myself, I need to find a different way to reinforce the relationship," she said, seated at the dining table in central Rome where she had just finished penning the letter as Graziano dictated.
"Maybe the ardor that was there 18 years ago has faded a bit, and I was worried I wouldn't find the right words to transmit my emotions," she said.
Stefanini pressed the letter into the hand of her husband, Stefano Carli, 45, and left him to read it. Afterwards, he was visibly moved.
"If you want to say 'I care for you, I love you, I always think about you', you write it on Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger ... this is much more real," Carli said.
(Additional reporting by Gabriele Pileri; Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
