Tag: memoir

Writing is My Unreliable Lover

Posted on by juliebarton in Blog

Writing_BlogI am a fitful writer. I am happiest when I write, but I often don’t write for weeks, even months at a time. During those times, I can feel myself losing grip of my art, my light, my happiness. I doubt my work. Then life takes over, and I let it. I’ll reorganize the entire house, clean the windows, wipe the baseboards, visit the grocery and hardware stores, take the kids on an all-day outing. I pretend it’s fine; life is just busy. The truth is that life is busy. But it’s not fine. Not writing is like telling my lover it’s okay for him to leave for a month and not call or write. I tell him, “I can keep busy. It’s okay, I’ll be fine.”

No. I won’t.

Well-meaning friends have proposed that writing in fits and starts is just how I work. I have fruitful periods and barren periods. Sometimes the muse just isn’t there. Well, screw that. My testy muse is an unreliable bitch and I need to find a way to forge on without her.

This last week, for the first time in over a decade, I considered giving up writing. I have a full memoir manuscript begging me from the shelf to just finish her, revise her, connect a few more dots. It’s an incredible story of faith and love and magic. And I sat around this week and said out loud, tears rolling down my cheeks, “It’s a stupid idea. I don’t even know why I’m writing it.”

Of course, the little honest bird in my heart knew that this was ridiculous, just a toe-dip into despair to see how it felt to give up. It was a reaching down, a superficial effort to hit bottom so I could sit down at the god-blessed computer and write something.

I guess it worked, because here I am. But I’m exhausted. I’m wet and worn like a twisted rag. I feel the pull, right this very second, to drift to my bed and take a nap. But with each word I type, I’m pushing away the blank page, trying to stare down the dark place, fists raised for a fight.

For Bunker

Posted on by juliebarton in Blog

June 17, 2012

After he came to me in 1996, I began calculating the years. He was a big dog, so I’d be really lucky if I got 15 years. I spent way too much time dreading the day I would lose him. I remember consoling myself with the thought that when he died, he would’ve done his job by then. I would be okay, able to survive another few decades without him.

I never said it out loud, but I knew that Bunker had come to help me heal. He was a therapy dog before there were therapy dogs. He brought me a level of calm I’d never known. Without him, my depression would’ve probably ruined me. He picked up my broken, battered spirit and carried it alongside his. He took away the heaviness, and I still don’t understand how he did it. I don’t understand who he was or why he carried such medicine. I spend my days writing my heart out, trying so hard to explain the tremendous comfort he brought.

He was 11 when he got sick, and he died within 10 days of his diagnosis. The moment he passed, I felt a shift in the atmosphere. The light changed. In a way, I still feel frozen in that spot, still stuck in that sterile veterinarian’s office with his lifeless head on my lap. I write this book in an effort to move out of that room, to share the beauty that was his being, to share our story of healing. How blessed I was to have him.

Hope

Posted on by juliebarton in Blog

I just finished reading the memoir manuscript for the first time. Even though it’s an incomplete first draft and it has so much work ahead of it, I feel like I could weep because it’s good. It’s really good. And, of course, it’s awful in places.

But really, the story and the arc and what’s happening is so real and true and amazing that I feel daunted and humbled by the progress. I realize that I’m really only about halfway through, but judging the distance until I’m finished doesn’t seem important right now. The important part is that I feel hopeful. I can do this, and this story is so important and worth telling. Isn’t that a miracle?

I miss you, Bunker. This one’s for you.

Amen.

(Remind me to read this tomorrow when I’m thwacking my head on my desk.)

Ode to the pen

Posted on by juliebarton in Blog

In the process of writing this memoir, I have dug out a bunch of my old journals and letters. Amid the pages of angst, boredom, and sadness, I found some folded letters tucked in the pages. They were epic love letters from an old flame. I can’t help but feel like part of the reason we were able to express ourselves so deeply in six-page-long treatises on the greatness of our connection was that there was no internet, no e-mail, fewer distractions. We talked of making mix tapes for each other, and looking in the mailbox with great anticipation for the next letter. I am so grateful I loved like that. And I’m lucky that these words still exist on paper, written with an actual pen. Think of all the words of love and hope that are lost on hard drives languishing in piles of e-waste. Write someone a letter today. With a pen, not a keyboard.