January 2021: Moving + “Writing As Therapy”
After an unplanned hiatus, I’m back in the saddle and I’m so excited to catch you up.
Why the break? We moved back to Los Angeles!
Stephen’s job that brought us to San Francisco is WFH-flexible now, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense to be in the country’s most expensive city during a pandemic. We moved back to LA for our friends and sunshine, but if I’m being totally honest, the main reason is because the 2020 wildfires broke my heart.
We had a hard time with the SF fog and wind, but we started taking long drives around the bay every weekend. We fell in love with NorCal fast and hard and dreamt about settling outside the city.
Click and look close to see the SF skyline in the horizon.
Allow me to tangent with a love note to Northern California:
NorCal, you are undoubtedly the superior beauty between the two Californias. Your trees and forests are unparalleled. Your rugged coastline is stunning. The rolling hills of wine country offer so much peace. Few things are better than slurping your oysters in beautiful Tomales Bay and I’m convinced the best, shitty burger in the world is from a stand at Stinson Beach. And San Francisco, I already miss your bookstores. I loved your museums and taking my dog for weekend swims at Chrissy Field, looking up to the Golden Gate Bridge. You’re a good city. And I am so grateful I got to experience it all.
With all that said, the fires made me realize that living in NorCal wouldn’t be possible. At least, not practical, with fire season getting longer and insurance companies dropping homeowner policies. The sad truth is NorCal has more greenery and more to burn. That love letter was written to a place I love but can’t spend the rest of my life with—the most painful kind of break up.
The Blade Runner views from my patio in SF on September 9th, 2020
I went through all the stages of grief. The smoke and AQI was unlike anything we’d experienced in LA (as was infamous red day of hell in September). It was hard to process or even believe. Then, I became angry. Since my WIP takes place in Los Angeles, I actually wrote wildfires into the story: The state of California was flaming like my anger, outside matching my inside. After that, I manifested my bargaining into a plea about climate change. Then, depression.
Stephen and I needed a break. After loving the Oregon coast we visited in May, we planned to spend a month in Ashland. Disastrously, that lit up worse than the Bay Area. We cancelled our trip and found the most affordable and dog friendly place we could find out of the smoke within driving distance: the retiree haven of Scottsdale, AZ. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Arizona got me out of the depression (at least, back to the regular global pandemic depression…) and I reached acceptance. And thankfully Stephen shares my affinity for hot weather. Two days in the dry desert heat and we decided we needed to get out of the SF fog and NorCal smoke for good. It’s funny, in this mysterious and confusing thing called life, how sometimes you “just know.”
Why not move to the much more affordable AZ? Example A: the coffee shop patron we encountered wearing a t-shirt that said “Fuck Your Gun Free Zone.” I’m all about reaching across the aisle, but I’m not keen to abandon my liberal bubble where I have to wonder who in the grocery store is packing heat.
Stephen & our dog Emmy. We walk underneath the Hollywood sign now and it is very weird.
We started hunting for LA apartments online. Everyone was doing FaceTime tours and within three weeks, still in Arizona, we signed a lease for a spot in… Hollywood. Underneath the infamous sign in Beachwood Canyon. Where I never expected to live.
After AZ, we had less than three weeks to pack up our things in SF and move. Whew. While the circumstances were a bit tragic, we’re happy to be back in our beloved Los Angeles. Even though we haven’t seen any of our friends, the sun feels good, being here feels right and I’m glad.
Meanwhile, I worked on my second major rewrite.
Right at the beginning of October when we got to AZ, I received an edit letter and manuscript notes from my writing mentor. It was positive overall and I was so energized by our conversation, but it was clear I hadn’t excavated and resolved everything in the story.
I’ve always been fearful of the trauma and heavy subject matter in my WIP but I knew I needed to face it. My critique group helped me see that this time last year. You’d think that after eight months of revisions and almost doubling the word count, I’d have gotten it right. But what I learned from my mentor in October is that it still wasn’t all there. It still needed more.
My MC—aka the imaginary girl in my head that I talk about as if she’s a real person—had been holding back the most difficult scenes for last. (Assuming I don’t need another big rewrite, that is.) Some of the edits were easy, but most of the things I needed to add were, well, painful. Thank God I was in Arizona and rejuvenated by the heat, because after writing even three pages in the mornings, I was spent for the rest of the day.
Sitting under this tree in the Arizona heat helped me recover from revision hangovers.
I told Stephen that this rewrite felt like a constant Therapy Hangover. The hard sessions when you process deep emotions and feel like lead-based jelly afterwards. I also felt weirdly sad it had taken so long for my MC to show me things. It felt as though my made-up but real character didn’t fully trust me all along, and that only after a year and a half inhabiting my brain, she was ready to bare it all. When I expressed that sadness, Stephen said, “Well, if it’s like therapy, then it would make sense she wouldn’t come out with her most painful memories first. It takes time to build trust with a therapist.”
Oh my wise husband, if this goddamn book ever gets published, no words in the acknowledgements will ever suffice.
People have said, “writing is like therapy” and what people usually mean is they experience some kind of pleasurable, therapeutic catharsis. But oddly enough, writing of any kind has rarely felt that way for me. Here’s my take: writing is like therapy, but you’re both the therapist and the patient, and it’s exhausting AF.
It’s also necessary.
I’m an internal processor, but things can get pretty crazy in my noggin if I don’t write them down. I write to either organize my thoughts (which is what ends up in this newsletter) or to explore questions (which is what I’ve been doing with my book). It’s become a necessity, despite how draining it can be. Like therapy.
It’s not all grit and pain, though.
Being back in LA has helped me see my MC in new ways. I’ve taken better notes on the angle of light and how the air feels. And one afternoon I drove around her neighborhood and learned things about her I could’ve never learned otherwise. I’m seeing more through her eyes.
Two weeks ago, I completed the rewrite and I felt an amount of satisfaction I’ve yet to feel with this project. I dare say, about anything I’ve produced. It’s not done yet and it still needs boatloads of work. But I’m starting to feel genuinely proud of it. So much so that I went completely out of character and stated my pride publicly. Click on the IG post for the evidence.
I’m submitting the updates to my mentor this weekend. I don’t know what she’ll say about it. And who knows what will happen with it at all in the end. But like therapy, I know that after the work, I’m better for it. And during a time where so many people are just trying to get by, moving, self-improvement and growth is nothing short of a blessing.
That said, I’d very much like to get this fucking thing published one day.
- Tess Canfield, January 2021 via The Latest