Editing a Life

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Today's guest post is by Darrelyn Saloom, a monthly regular here at NO RULES. You
can read
more of her guest posts here, or follow
her on Twitter.




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An odd thing happened to me when I finished collaborating on a memoir. I spent four
years and two days (obsessively at times) writing, revising, and editing a manuscript.
As soon as I typed the last line, I pushed away from the keyboard and began to edit
my life.




The tiny farmhouse my husband and I raised three sons and lived in for fourteen years
became vacant. We had continued to harvest the land but rented the house. Now it sat
empty. We missed the old homestead and decided to renovate and turn it into a place
to gather with family and friends. 




I filled the house with a mishmash of beloved things: embroidered curtains, iron beds,
vintage quilts, new sheets, Franciscan plates, a farm table, rickety old chairs, tin
lamps, a painted desk, and a mahogany bookcase. Some items I ordered on eBay, but
mostly I scoured the back roads of Louisiana for antiques. 




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When the interior was nearly complete, I spent a night alone seeped in memories. My
husband stayed in what we now call "the big house" with the cat and the dog. I slept
in an iron captain's bed and awoke to thunder and a loud, drumming rain on the tin
roof.



I flung open the curtains and hopped back in bed. I called my husband and told him
I never wanted to leave, that I yearned to sell the 3,000-square-foot house in the
suburbs and move back to the 900-square-foot house on the farm. It didn't take him
long to agree. He missed slinging hay and raking out stalls.



I'm not sure what has come over me. I'm selling most of my things or giving them away.
I only use about one third of what is stuffed in my closets anyway. We are keeping
the photos, family mementos, the clothing we need, my husband's guitars and amplifiers,
our laptops and books.




As far as the rest of the stuff, I'm going to go through it the same way I did every
sentence of the manuscript—pluck out unnecessary items like words. Delete the things
that weigh down my life and keep me from turning the page. It seems editing a life
is not so different from editing a book. 

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Darrelyn is collaborating with Deirdre Gogarty on a memoir. Read
more about their project here.




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