"What it is to burn"
The essay I've been trying to write for fifteen years
My house burned down fall 2007 in a wildfire. This event, as expected, had a profound impact on me. I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to write about it. I’ve written a dozen iterations of this essay, and I’m really happy with this as a result. The hardest part about writing memoir is you can’t just lay out the facts. You have to weave the relevant pieces of your life into a tapestry in order to hold the emotional thruline.
I took a workshop on creative nonfiction in grad school and during that class we didn’t refer to the memoirists by first name when we read their work. It’s difficult to look at Jane and say, “You’re unsympathetic on page three.” Instead, we referred to them as characters, much like we did in fiction. That’s always my biggest challenge with this type of writing: separating out the truth from the story and figuring out what truths serve the story best. The first version of this was twenty messy pages exploring every aspect of the loss. Then I had a draft that just focused on Sadie, the dog I lost. There was angry version in there as well that explored my loss of faith from this. (God took the brunt of my rage.) All in all, I’m glad I took the time to let this rest and be rewritten. These are all the best parts of my grief and tragedy.
It’s not easy taking your broken heart and turning it into art. I’m thrilled that this is out in the world. Thank you, Muleskinner Journal for publishing this.
Here’s an excerpt:
“There’s smoke in the air.
Not the tinny smoke of barbecues or the warm, wood smoke of a fireplace. Not even the salty, beach pit smoke of summer evenings and shared laughter.
Fire season smells different.
A wildfire smells like a warning.”
