Then she turns into a barking machine, non-stop from San Jose to Los Gatos to Santa Cruz. Constant barking. Loud barking. Frantic barking.
It's been over a year that she's lived with us and nothing seemed to make a difference. Recently, after a long trip filled with barking in the Toyota I took her on a short trip in the Honda and noticed again how I didn't have any problems with her. I suggested to my husband that we take out the doggy gate and put down the seats so she could come up closer to where we were.
Filled with hope, we invited Cassie to go for a ride. She jumped in the backseat and then walked all the way up to the front and sat down. We started the car and headed down the road.
Silence. Total silence.
This past week we've done several more short trips, around the block a few miles downtown, and each one is just the same. A quiet dog happily going along for a ride. It's not a permanent solution but I think now that we know what the problem was, we'll be able to work on acclimating her to riding in the back. Heck, the view's better back there anyway with more windows. But for now, it's all about getting up close and personal on our family outings.
Some stories are like that, staying in the background, barking at you, begging for attention. They're never satisfied until you bring them up front with you, as close as they can get. But sometimes we're afraid to bring the stories too close. Afraid of what the story might show the world about us or perhaps afraid of the story might show us something we don't want to see.
I never expect that kind of writing to come easily to me. I scream at the computer and throw a few barking fits of my own. I've finally learned that I can't do that kind of deep, emotionally honest writing in one sitting. But I can do it in short bursts, like a trip around the block.
The best stories, the ones that stick in our hearts and minds, are the ones that reflect life as it is, not as we wish it were. The ones that bring us up close and personal.
Who am I?I was born on the Cancer/Leo cusp and share a birthday with Ernest Hemingway and Robin Williams. The similarities don't stop there as I can go from depressed to ecstatic without ever passing go. I feel scared most of the time though my friends call me brave and I find it easier to believe in my friends than to believe in my own abilities to make what I want out of my life.
Who am I? A wife, a mother, a daughter, and even, gulp, a grandmother.
Who am I? A writer who never gets tired of playing with words, even when the words are hard to find. A writer of books for children and articles for grown-ups and many things in-between.
Who am I? A motivational speaker, writing instructor, workshop leader and full-time follower of dreams.
Who am I? Read and find out.
"We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little." Anne Lamott
"Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing...the rest will follow."Jane Yolen
"The whole thing is, you’ve got to make them care about somebody." Frank Capra
"As writers, we must be willing to feel our sadness, our anger, our terror, so we can
reach in and find our sweet vulnerability that is just sitting there waiting for us to come
back home." Nancy Slonim Aronie
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours!" Richard Bach
"Yet somehow, we write; and most of the time, we like what we write. The dark place
seems less dark when we get there. It was only the journey that was fearful." Susan
Shaughnessy
"You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price
of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist
you must learn your craft -- then you can add all the genius you like." Phyllis A.
Whitney
"Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother
when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When
I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is." Anne Rice
"I write in terror. I have to talk myself into bravery with every sentence, sometimes
every syllable." Cynthia Ozick
"There have been societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no
societies that did not tell stories." Ursula K. LeGuin
"Your first job is to get your own story straight." Natalie Goldberg
"Only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking."
Naomi Wolf
"Few children learn to read books by themselves. Someone has to lure them into the
wonderful world of the written word; someone has to show them the way." Orville
Prescott
"A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults."
Ursula K. LeGuin
"I'd always thought you had to be a special person to write. And then I realized you
just have to start." Abigail Thomas
"You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly
have all the energy and imagination you will ever need." Jerry Gillies
"But they’re not telling the truth if they don’t teach, one, that writing is hard work, and,
two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer."
Doris Lessing
"A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote."Yevgeny
Yentushenko
"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the
greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't
believe in magic will never find it." Roald Dahl
"I compose sometimes with a pen and notebook, sometimes on the computer; it
makes no difference. If all I had was a chisel and a rock I would write on the rock."
Ursula Le Guin
"If you want to write from a place of emotional integrity, it is important to learn
everything you can about all kinds of emotions, including those that exist in you, that
you wish didn't." Elizabeth Berg
"And this is the way a novel gets written, in ignorance, fear, sorrow, madness, and a
kind of psychotic happiness as an incubator for the wonders being born." Jack
Kerouac
"Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones
who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and
strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their
work, despite the difficulties." Bonnie Friedman
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Comments
I'm learning that a great many short bursts can help me get a lot done.
And I so get what you mean about writing the unvarnished, unedited story. I have to fight my tendency to keep things light and airy, which is all well and good...except when the truth of the story lurks in shadow.
"The best stories, the ones that stick in our hearts and minds, are the ones that reflect life as it is, not as we wish it were. The ones that bring us up close and personal." will make sense.
Lovely post, Susan.
Edited at 2009-11-11 04:50 pm (UTC)
= Anne McKenna