The last two years of this series of correspondences have been conducted under the shadow of a pandemic that continues to carry on. In the fall of 2020, as things were starting to look more grim, I decided I would continue the series with Wendy Chin-Tanner, whom I’d met once IRL and wanted to keep talking with. Geography, and the pandemic, may keep us apart, but I believe that this correspondence brought us together in that particular way that writers writing to one another can. There is a certain intimacy that can be achieved in the written correspondence, and maybe it increases when we’ve also dwindled our typical social IRL circles down to the level of those who are vaccinated and behaving as safely as we need them to for our particular circumstance. I was honored when she agreed. Wendy and I even had one phone call during the year, which is not something I’ve done with prior correspondents. Like the correspondence, I found our voice conversation to be just as juicy, fortifying, and grounding.

I don’t have a plan to correspond in this way with another writer in 2022. This conversation serves, then, as a kind of coda to all the prior correspondences. If another correspondence were to occur, I hope it’s in a future without the growing and shapeshifting shadow of global pandemic. Thank you to Triangle House Review for publishing these conversations. I hope everyone reading this is safe, well, and thriving as best they can.

– Wendy C. Ortiz

When Wendy approached me about doing this correspondence project, I was utterly charmed by the idea and knew in my gut that it would be a nourishing experience. I haven’t conducted an epistolary friendship since I was a teenager when, after meeting friends at summer camp who lived far away, we would then carry on our relationships in letters through the school year. AWP is very much like camp for writers and when I met Wendy there in 2019, the “click” that happened between us was not at all unlike those instantaneous connections made in adolescence when you’re a weird kid who’s a bit out of step with your peers at school and you suddenly stumble upon one of your people. There was a similar kind of recognition, a being-on-the-same-pageness that took place, which then grew and blossomed throughout the course of this correspondence. As I suspected from our conversations at AWP, the page we share is not only writerly, but spans across our identities as women of color, mothers of daughters, children of immigrants, social activists, and survivors.

During what has most certainly been one of the most difficult periods of my life crowded with people and caregiving and health challenges and deadlines, all during a seemingly endless global pandemic, writing to Wendy afforded me a space to reflect and share with someone I knew would just get it. No matter what else was going on with me, I couldn’t wait to read her letters and I couldn’t wait to respond. Writing is a solitary business even when you’re physically surrounded by people. The letters here represent a bridge between two solitudes, exemplifying the Muriel Rukeyser quote: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split right open.” But here, we’ve asked, what would happen if two women told each other the truth of their lives? It’s an understatement to say that this experience has been a gift to me and I hope that by sharing it, those of you reading might find something validating, reassuring, or useful in it, too.

– Wendy Chin-Tanner

January

WCO: I rarely ever meet other Wendys and yet now I have a year in which to address my correspondent with my own name. Hello, Wendy! Welcome to the correspondence. As we have emailed recently, “Happy New Year (?)” which I think just acknowledges where we are--in the pandemic, in the beginning of another year, in a state of overwhelm.

In the past few days I’ve been moved to finally go through a stash of old writing notebooks, some of them from my masters program in psychology but the majority being just writing notebooks. I noticed that for years I ran with this metaphor of “dredging” whenever I approached my notebooks--I constantly felt like I was carrying a machete or some kind of big sharp tool to violently push my way through the material. Clearing out space, but still trudging through muck. I realized yesterday that somewhere along the way it has shifted--not so much dredging. Right now it feels like it might be ‘raking’--but I get the image of raking sand. All of this makes me wonder: Do you typically have a working metaphor for writing? If so, what metaphors might you be working with now around process (and “before”)?

February

WCT: Wendy! Much like when we met in real life at the Portland AWP, I have this pervasive sense that we are “on the same page,” thinking about the same things at the same time. This is such a pressing question for me, too.

I have been aware for some time that my relationship with my writing process is informed by trauma in a way that bears reexamination and renovation. I think it developed as a coping mechanism and its development was also subject to coping mechanisms that have become maladaptive over time, as they were rooted in family dysfunction, racism, sexism, and classism.

My go-to metaphor for my writing process used to be surfing, which is weird because I don’t surf. In fact, I don’t even like to swim in the ocean. But in any case, the old metaphor went something like this: I sit on the beach and watch, and when a wave comes, I have to catch it. If I miss it, then those words, those thoughts, that work is gone forever. Likewise, if I fall off the surfboard, if I fail to ride out the wave, I lose the work, too. I have no control over the frequency of the waves--sometimes they’re back to back and it doesn’t matter if I’m exhausted or overwhelmed, and other times the wait between them is excruciatingly long. Once, I waited ten years.

There are several problems with the surfing metaphor. Within it, I imagine myself as having no agency, no control, and I imagine my writing as a non-renewable resource that is completely separate from myself. I am alienated from it and as such, I’ve struggled with object impermanence, thinking, for example, that my manuscript doesn’t exist or doesn’t exist in the form that I thought it did if I don’t work on it for a period of time. Other times, I’ve struggled with a sense that it wasn’t me who wrote it and if I dare to take a break, I become afraid that I’ve lost the skills and ability to continue working on it. This is, of course, irrevocably entangled with the lack of entitlement, low self-esteem, and toxic “work ethic” of existing as a woman of color in the white supremacist capitalist patriarchal cesspool of American Letters. I think we value output over process, devaluing labor to our detriment.

So I’m trying to find a new metaphor. Hunting for treasure on the beach, perhaps. Or making maps of outer space. I don’t know, Wendy. What do you think? Are you happy with the raking metaphor or are you searching for new ones, too?

March

WCO: Duuuuuuuude. Yes. Okay, I want to first just remind ourselves of that time at AWP, because it’s also like the anniversary of that (two years ago) and because it was one of the more meaningful interactions I have had at one of those events. What I remember noticing is that we seemed to be weirdly aligned very quickly, like I have this image of seeing you and then our arms were linked and we were on the move, laughing and talking as though we were picking up a previous conversation! I realize that may just be me, and in fact, I don’t know for sure if we were literally arm in arm, but that’s what it felt like. And then it seemed very important to find a place to sit and continue what became a deeper conversation. This doesn’t happen to me all the time! In fact, rarely. So I pay attention when it does (and this correspondence exists in part to continue again where we left off). I felt your warmth, and your edge, and the ease I felt. Thank you for being one of the high points of that particular AWP! (Which I think of as my absolute last AWP conference I’ll ever attend.)

I can appreciate your surfing metaphor. Having only surfed one whole time, it makes me think of you on the shore watching for the “right wave”--and how I was SHOCKED when I went surfing and realized most of the time was spent paddling out. My arms were noodles after an hour. I was ecstatic that I made it onto the board a few times and rode successfully but the lead-up--the intense constant paddling--was overwhelming. Then once you’re way out there, waiting for the wave.

You bring up so many intense insights here: the impact of trauma on your writing process, and existing as a woman of color in this cesspool that is American Letters/the publishing industry. I wonder how you feel about talking about these very things in more depth (understanding that ultimately this will become a public correspondence, though we can edit it however we choose).

I think of Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, who I’ve listened to speak quite a bit over the course of the pandemic--interviews, podcasts, live events. She has said something before about how we have monetized the thing (writing) that saved us as young people. And when I think about how I came to writing, as a kid who loved writing, and how my image of myself as a writer was fully (ill-in)formed when I was a child, yes, I was using writing as a tool to help me navigate family trauma. It was where I could speak the unspeakable through the mouths of characters until I was able to write in my own voice. So my coping mechanism became … a form of work. And it felt less like a renewable resource by the time I was in an MFA program. That’s where my troubles with writing began (LOL).

Listening to Karla talk, one thing that struck me is that even with the particular traumas I’ve survived, not once, in the last 30 plus years I have seen doctors or therapists, not once was I ever offered psychotropic medications (and once, while deep in grief, I asked and was denied). I feel a mixture of things about this--rage, a sense of invisibility, gratefulness, but also confusion--but ultimately my best coping mechanisms always ended up being writing, substance use, and other things people can read about in my books (ha).

My raking metaphor hasn’t held up. I’m not quite dredging either. I just spent a couple of hours in old journals from my early twenties, transcribing and writing scenes. There is no metaphor that comes to mind at the moment. Maybe just squirrels running treadmills in my brain today.

How are you best currently coping with the toxic “work ethic” of existing as a woman of color writer? What buoys you lately?

April

WCT: Whoa, it IS the anniversary of that AWP, which is also our anniversary! As otherworldly and distant as such before-times events now seem, it also doesn’t feel like it was so long ago at all--two whole years ago--because AWP Portland was the last AWP I attended and probably will attend for a long time. The pandemic has taught me that I would be totally fine if I never left the house ever again #JkNotJk. That notwithstanding, I would make an exception and leave the house for you, because my experience of our time there mirrored yours entirely. When we met and fell into conversational lockstep, I felt that ineffable, undeniable click, and heard a quiet voice in my head saying, “this person is my people.” Our WCO & WCT AWP prom photo kind of says it all. And this kind of connection is rare for me, too, but when it happens, I treasure and nurture it, and in my life, those relationships have been deep, consistent, and enduring. So I’m super grateful for the continuation of that conversation in this medium.

And so, to the real talk, which seems to be our mutually favored talk modality. This pandemic has kicked my ass, Wendy. I feel like every day, I’m spinning plates while walking a tightrope. As I sit down to write this, humanity is still facing the greatest collective trauma I have witnessed in my lifetime. The pandemic continues to rage across the United States mere weeks after an attempted coup took place in the Capitol. My elderly, high-risk parents sit in the next room, having quarantined in my home since March, 2020, so that I can take care of them as their physical and mental health rapidly decline. Yesterday, we had our second family Zoom funeral for my aunt who died shortly after recovering from Covid. Last spring, we had one for my uncle after he died of Covid. My children are both on Zoom at the moment, making the best of the remote learning we could cobble together while my husband and I try to keep making books, and keep the lights on at our little indie graphic novel publishing company. There’s been a leak in my house since right before Christmas and we can’t find its source. I wish that were only a metaphor. And of course, as a Chinese American family, we are being repeatedly triggered and traumatized by racist, anti-Asian rhetoric coming from all sides and the continued attacks in the streets, most concerningly on seniors. I would be much more worried about my parents if they were back in their own house in the city, but the threat of white supremacist violence looms even in my little, hippie Upstate New York town. So I check and double-check the locks at night as my hair falls out in handfuls, a casualty of autoimmune disease, perimenopause, and acute anxiety. On the bright side, my parents have had their first Moderna shots and for that, I’m extremely grateful.

With my bandwidth so low, I’ve had to learn to set better professional boundaries and stick with them. This is something--among many things--that I admire you for, and I have tried to model my new forays in this area after you. I’ve also had to learn to grant myself grace when I make mistakes--so many more mistakes than I’m used to making. These have been difficult, ego-bruising, anxiety-inducing lessons, but ultimately, I think they’re necessary for not only my personal, but professional growth. What you said about Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s comments on lack of adequate medical care for women of color who have experienced trauma and monetization of what saved us as children is just like, oof, bullseye. In what ways does being a therapist yourself affect your writing?

I really don’t know if what’s buoying me lately is good or bad. All I know is, as people usually do in times of trauma, I’m leaning into some of my oldest coping mechanisms. Maybe survival at times like this is enough, but I also don’t love feeling like a hamster running in the wheel of my own patterns. Just like you, from childhood on, I used writing as a way to escape my family trauma and abuse, and while I accept that this made me who I am, I wonder if there might not be some dissociative elements to that tendency.

In this year of trigger-stacked multi-layered trauma, I’ve been escaping from the shittier realities of my 2020/21 world into the world of my WIP, “King of the Armadillos,” which is set in the 1950s. The manuscript became my own private Narnia or Oz, because once I fully stepped into a draft, the story took on vivid technicolor while my life receded into black and white. Which isn’t to say that writing is pure pleasure--not at all--but it’s a way to transfer my anxieties about scary, uncontrollable things to less scary, much more controllable things. My kids and husband report, for example, that while I’m in draft, I seem, at times, far away, and I notice, too, that I have less conflict with my parents simply because I don’t engage with them as much about things that would otherwise bother me. This coping mechanism has its uses professionally, too. For example, I found a literary agent last March, produced four drafts of the novel in quarantine, and am preparing to go to submission this week (which is a whole other thing and I wonder if you feel comfortable sharing your thoughts about that). But is this healthy? I think the fuck not.

I used to pride myself on getting everything done and meeting everyone’s expectations of me regardless of what was going on in my life. I went back to work ten days after giving birth to my older daughter. I worked through three miscarriages. I worked through the grieving process for my grandmother who had been my primary caregiver. I now realize that this was all super unhealthy, dissociated, and not at all commendable in spite of what the toxic mythology of the American work ethic would have us believe. The relentless anxiety around losing out (“you snooze, you lose”) is narrated as relentless ambition or drive. This is bad for everyone, I think, but for people of color, it’s amplified by the old adage, “twice as good for half as much,” which translates to the need to work harder, struggle longer, be better, more qualified, and more talented to get just a fraction of what white writers expect and get as their due. To say that this is simply the reality for writers of color, particularly for those of us who are non-cis male, is objectively true, but it glosses over the fact that it’s not only oppressive but unacceptable. This should not be our reality. We cannot allow for it to continue to be our reality, but to make that happen, we’re going to have to make it happen ourselves, with yet more labor--uncomfortable, taxing, high stakes labor. Maybe that part’s a Catch-22. But I also think an appropriate and necessary aspect of that labor starts from within, by granting ourselves grace and rest, and by honoring our own feelings and boundaries. Maybe if we do that, we can take a step towards decolonizing ourselves, towards removing “that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within us,” as the great Audre Lorde says.

I’m so intrigued by your process of going through old journals, transcribing, making notes, and writing scenes from them. It recalls me to my teenage fascination with Anaïs Nin and her writing process, and makes me wonder why I stopped keeping journals (apart from writing journals where I jot down lines, images, notes on characters or plot ideas) in college after keeping them faithfully for many years. Do you feel ready to talk about what this project might be? Whatever it is, I can’t wait to hear all about it and to read it.

May

WCO: It’s May now. May 8th to be exact. And I had written you back in mid-April, because I was confused. Time is still a loopy soup for me. I kept the text and want to include it here. What else is there to say in May? I turn 48 next week. I love that number more than 47. Maybe more than any number in the 40s. A second pandemic birthday for me. This year I’m having one friend per hour visit me on my front porch. As you know, with an unvaccinated kid in the house I’m still being cautious about most things. This week I hiked without my mask on about 90% of the time, reserving it for the narrow parts of the trail when I’m passing by huffing runners or bicyclists. It feels alright. But I’m accustomed to masks now, and hopeful for September when they may open up vaccinations to the under 12 set.

Okay, here is what I wrote in reply in April:

As sometimes happens, mainly over the course of the pandemic, I find myself here several days after the first of the month wondering how it is that I lost those days?? But here I am, 10 days into April.

My heart goes out to you and your family. I’m so sorry to hear you’ve had Zoom funerals to attend during this pandemic. I have such a small family (huge extended, but that’s a whole other story, as I’m estranged from a lot of them) and I’ve thought often about how my father and my grandmother would have fared had they been alive during this pandemic. And the thought naturally arises that I’m glad they weren’t here for it, which is just…beyond sad.

I’m completely disgusted and enraged by the attacks on Asian Americans. My partner is Korean American and also the person in our household who has been going out to do all outside errands during this entire pandemic, as well as going in to work two days a week. I honestly think my heart condition worsened in the past month because of my worry. Whereas I’d go into atrial fibrillation from over-exertion/exercise onset before, in March it started happening daily and I had to increase my medication to daily as opposed to “as needed.” It’s a helpless feeling. I know it’s also unearthed for her the times in her life when she faced microaggressions--though we know that “microaggressions” is a fucking understatement when describing this kind of behavior, really--and it makes me want to behave aggressively in kind against anyone who would hurt her or threaten to hurt her. But I’m inside my house most of the time, which makes it feel even more helpless of a situation. I only go out to doctor’s appointments and to walk/hike. Saying, “Be careful” when she leaves is leaving out so much. My heart literally hurts.

When you describe the person you were, working, pushing through the most difficult times, I just want to hug you and that person you were. I also want to hug you now, and cheer that you’re learning to grant yourself grace. That is huge. It’s something I feel I’ve gained during this pandemic--between the isolation, the work I do as a therapist, and this heart condition that’s forcing me to slow down and be more gentle with myself, I have had to completely change how I approach everything. Like you, I also learned I’d be okay without ever leaving the house again (lol) and whenever I imagine the future, I find that the places I want to be are mostly outdoors anyway. I don’t want to go back to people being less than six feet away from me! I never liked that in the first place, lol. I mean, when I was younger I did, but I haven’t liked it for a while in my adulthood. I’ve been allowed to fully blossom as the hermit I always knew I was and I just refuse to go back to what it was before.

I’m excited that you’re deep in your WIP and on the verge of submission. Maybe by the time you read this you will be IN IT? I don’t know what I have to offer about that--except that I have found it useful to read all the comments editors said in rejections, which also forces a thicker skin to build. It’s still useful to me to think about what editors said in rejecting Excavation, for example, and, well, to be honest, there are editors and publishers that I *absolutely don’t want* based on their comments. A younger part of me cannot believe that I would tell my agent in advance of trying to sell my next book, “These are the editors and publishers I absolutely won’t work with” but that’s where I’m at now.

It’s probably not surprising but I too had a teenage and early 20s fascination with Anaïs Nin. I like to dip into her journals every several years, still. My work with my own journals is slow and has to be. It’s too overwhelming to stay in them too long. Most recently I’ve been working on a draft of a chapter for the book, but also in the past couple months, I’ve completely rethought my entire book proposal. The premise of the book changed. I think it’s better, more dimensional, but now it will require even more honesty, more sharp truths, and I have had to go a little slower. I’m not quite ready to talk about it yet because I’m still mulling over this new premise and how I will approach it. It’s kind of wild to me that my understanding, too, of this new premise seemed to also coincide with my heart condition worsening this past month...I’m basically having to start over with the book proposal and start over with my own health--like, I have had to nearly cut out coffee, I have to work on my diet in general, and I’ve drastically lowered my weed use (the latter of which I used too much of during the worst parts of the pandemic, my early evening “cocktail” out of control).

You asked how being a therapist has affected my writing, and I think about this from time to time. I know for sure that it helps me think through a vaster choice of possibilities when I’m trying to discover or understand people’s motivations and behaviors in my own life before I write about it. It also has the effect of making me too exhausted to write more. That is both LOL and crying emoji. I am absolutely not a front-line worker, but I think some people, maybe my clients, see me as an essential worker. I see myself as a helper, struggling along as best I can alongside everyone in this collective trauma.

You mentioned perimenopause and it reminded me that when I went in for an EKG yesterday they wrote on my record PERIMENOPAUSE (AROUND THE TIME OF MENOPAUSE). What is this like for you?? I have not really had much emotional bandwidth to be asking my friends close in age how they are faring (I barely talk to anyone but my family these days)--I hope to in the coming months. I myself have been having occasional night sweats, occasional hot flashes which are just bizarre, and then of course the effect on my cycle, which was previously steady and oh so predictable. It is not now. Maybe I should be glad that I’m going through some of this during the pandemic, when I’m barely leaving the house. I think too that perimenopause (AROUND THE TIME OF MENOPAUSE) lol is also what’s helping me think through this drastic change to my book proposal/premise. I hope in the coming months I’ll be able to share more about this!

I’m excited to hear how submissions are going/went and what your experience has been like. Until then, take good care, my heart is with you. Xo

June

WCT: How is it June already? Oof, I identify so hard with so much of what you said--about fearing for your partner, about feeling unsafe, about being unready to “reenter” the world in any kind of pre-pandemic capacity. How are things going for your family in LA now? I love the ferocity of your protectiveness for your partner. It means a lot to me to be defended by my non-Asian loved ones especially because it corrects the minimization and silencing that, until now, anti-Asian racism usually elicits in this country. My heart is with you, too. And I thank you for your kind condolences. It’s surreal and amazing how much humans are capable of normalizing extraordinary conditions.

The adults in my house are fully vaccinated, my 14-y-o is half-vaccinated, and my 6-y-o still has to wait. As in your family, this mixed status means we are continuing to be more cautious than we might otherwise be if we were all fully vaccinated, but I have ventured out more this last month than I have previously and in the coming weeks, I’ll be going to NYC and seeing some vaccinated folks including my best friend, my agent, whom I haven’t yet met in person, and my editor (more on that later!). This should be a joyful thing, but it’s marred by the continued attacks on Asians and my fear of being attacked myself while minding my own business on public transportation or in the streets of the city where I was born and raised. Anti-Asian racism is nothing new and anyone of Asian descent in America has experienced some form of it, but what feels new to me now is the randomness, intensity, and quantity of violence targeting women and elderly people in particular. I’m afraid that my parents and I might be attacked from behind with no warning, as we keep seeing in the news. Honestly, I’m afraid even when my parents go out for walks in my small upstate town and I’ll certainly be afraid when they go out in the city. I bought myself a pair of rear-view sunglasses to minimize my anxiety, if nothing else.

In the past, I could tell myself that I would be able to assess a situation, evaluate if it was escalating, and then have time to escape or defend myself before it became physically violent, but now that little bit of control, which may well have been illusory anyway, seems to have gone. But as you said about microaggressions, even if a racist attack is “just verbal” or “just pushing and shoving,” it’s traumatic and the possibility that I might have to deal with that (especially if I’m with my kids) is making me intensely anxious. I now realize that part of my zen about quarantine has been because navigating those anxieties was taken out of the equation. That incredible weight, having lifted for a year, now feels unbearable.

The “just verbal” piece makes me think about this course I used to teach when I was a PhD student. It was an undergraduate sociology module in Genocide and Warfare and one of its key components was understanding the relationship between propaganda and violence. It goes like this:

Propaganda--->Dehumanization--->Violence

What was most shocking and illuminating to every batch of students was the realization that the same tropes are used time and again, in many different eras and many different countries, to first demonize and dehumanize certain designated marginalized groups, and then incite violence against them.

Those tropes invariably press the buttons of humanity's greatest taboos: Disease; pestilence; depravity.

From Nazi Germany to Rwanda to the United States of America, disease, that is, the scapegoating of particular groups for its spread, and the use of language to associate disease with those groups has been an incredibly effective tool in the promotion of genocide. And I'm using the word "promotion" deliberately here, because the mechanics of genocidal propaganda function in much the same manner as advertising campaigns.

The Nazis’ essential metaphor was that Germany was the body and Jewish people were the parasites. The Hutu majority made radio announcements calling the Tutsi population "cockroaches" that needed to be "exterminated." Last March, Donald Trump started calling Covid-19 "the Chinese Virus," which morphed into "Kung Flu" and various other racist terms carrying that particular mix of mockery and brutality reserved for Asians in America. Never mind that the dominant strains of Covid-19 in America also came from Europe. Never mind that there is evidence against the contention that Covid-19 originated in China, which is still under investigation. The Internet spread Trump's propaganda far and wide, and that was enough--open season on Asian Americans had been declared. In the past year, nearly 4,000 anti-Asian hate crimes have been reported and I just read that in NYC, there have been 42 anti-Asian hate crimes reported in the first three months of 2021 alone. In 2020, there were “only” 13. This is not a coincidence.

In these three examples, as in many others throughout history, cleaning and eliminating disease are codes for the eradication of the people deemed responsible. This is why the term "ethnic cleansing" is used to describe mass expulsion and genocidal campaigns. In the case of Asian Americans, we are now witnessing the inevitable shift from demonization and dehumanization to violence. From Riefenstahl to radio to Reddit, the technology has changed, but the message remains the same. If history teaches us anything, the violence against Asian Americans has only just begun. I think we’re going to see much more persecution and bloodshed. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic. But I know for damn sure that what begins with language and stereotypes ends with genocide.

I’m convinced, too, that the allostatic load of racism-related stress is intensifying my health issues. I’m in awe of how you’re navigating your heart condition in conjunction with this nightmare year, not to mention this nightmare perimenopause we are both experiencing. I think my peri symptoms are interacting with my autoimmune thyroid disorder--I’m experiencing more arthritis and sciatica, sudden drops in blood pressure which cause dizziness, hair loss, some vertigo, temperature dysregulation (I regularly get extremely cold for no external reason, particularly in the week leading up to my period), and don’t get me started about the anxiety and irritability twice a month now, both at ovulation and pre-menses. I like how you’re reframing your peri as a tool for thinking through the changes you’re making to your WIP, which I cannot wait to read! I also find it amazing that you’re able to continue digging through your notebooks. This is hard to admit as a fucking writer, but I can’t even seem to read more than a couple of pages of a novel in a row these days and I can’t sustain focus on reading anything new. I’ve heard that this is a thing, but it’s alarming as fuck, especially now because I’m supposed to bring my A game to the page and how can I do that if I can barely read?

But that brings me to my good book news amidst all this doom and gloom. In April, I sold my novel “King of the Armadillos” in a preempt to Nadxieli Nieto at Flatiron Books and I’m now awaiting my first set of editorial notes. It all happened way faster than I had anticipated or was told to expect by Jamie Carr, my agent, who typically under-promises and over-delivers, which is one of the many things I love about her. We went to submission on a Thursday, Nadxieli read the book almost immediately, and set a meeting for the next week. The meeting lasted three hours and would have surely gone on longer if it weren’t for the fact that I had to take my parents to get their second vaccine doses. Interestingly, my first meeting with Jamie also lasted three hours, so I guess that’s what happens when I have good chemistry with someone (I think it was hours before we left each other’s side on the day you and I met, too). So, as far as first dates go, that editorial meeting was a coup de foudre and Flatiron came back very quickly with a preempt offer, which was negotiated within a day or two, and that was that! Because of the alacrity of the preempt, the run-up to going into submission proved more anxiety-provoking (finalizing the draft, going over the list and freaking out about it, and making some tough choices therein) than the submission process itself, which I understand is pretty unusual.

So I feel really lucky, not least of all because after the American Dirt mess, thanks to the work of Dignidad Literaria, Flatiron brought in some great people including Nadxieli, her assistant editor Kukuwa Ashun who is also amazing, and the SVP Megan Lynch who I’m also getting to know. I feel welcome, supported by the team, and, most importantly, like they not only understand but appreciate what I’m trying to do as a writer and social activist. I’m grateful to be working closely with two women of color, one of whom I have actually known since high school. Though we didn’t know each other well, Nadxieli and I were in the same year at Saint Ann’s School (about which I wrote a somewhat unflattering essay, “An Unsentimental Education,” exploring some of my experiences of racism and sexism there). As children of working class immigrants and two of a scant handful of students of color, we were “in it, but not of it,” and ran the gauntlet--both at Saint Ann’s and beyond--of being women of color with little support, tools, or recourse in elite institutions. Before this, I hadn’t been in touch with Nadxieli in decades, so the fact that we’re now teammates in this book business is truly incredible.

I anticipate, however, that some people will think I got this book deal through nepotism, but you know what? Fuck ‘em. Seriously. Was my editor’s initial interest piqued because she recognized my name? Probably. Did she read past page 10 because of that? Probably not. Did she fall in love with the book, champion it, and get a good preempt offer approved in less than two weeks because we went to the same high school? Absolutely not. And furthermore, if this is nepotism, then to what exactly do many of our white peers owe their careers?

I totally get what you’re saying about how being a therapist saps the energy source that writing also requires. How do you protect your creative energy while supporting your clients? I definitely consider therapists to be essential workers. My husband and I have been in couples counseling throughout the pandemic--in fact, we started one month before it began, not because we were in crisis, but to work on some of the core issues, our imago stuff that, like all couples, keeps circling back around in our eighteen years together--and it has quite honestly been a lifeline. I think just having that dedicated space of commitment to enriching the relationship helps establish positive feedback loops that are grounding us in this traumatic time and even, dare I say, increasing our sense of intimacy and connection. And that isn’t to say that we aren’t also establishing clear boundaries--I feel like there’s a cultural conflation of intimacy and codependency. On the contrary, I think intimacy and connection are in fact predicated on mutual boundaries and respect for each other’s different needs. Since we run a publishing company together, collaborate on creative projects together, and have our own separate creative projects all while co-parenting, homeschooling, taking care of my aging parents, and staying in love, boundaries are essential. I’m sort of a Bowen-Schnarch-Hendrix gal when it comes to relationships--can you tell? LOL. Anyway, as in Schnarch’s formulation, I agree that differentiation is pretty much the antidote to codependency and there’s nothing like codependency to kill your sex drive, so… What kinds of issues have you been seeing in your practice between couples who are working from home during the pandemic?

I think another reason that therapy has been so grounding for me right now is related to stuff we’ve touched on before--my tendencies towards using dissociation as a tool for slogging on with work, with life, with my parentified role in my family of origin. I have a deep fear that being my parents’ caregiver, which has become highly involved and stressful as my mother is experiencing a number of health issues this year, is going to render my barely manageable set of responsibilities totally unmanageable and, especially now that I’m entering this new territory in publishing, I’m afraid that everything will come crashing down. This is an old fear and I have characteristically dealt with it by compartmentalizing, numbing out, transferring anxiety, and dissociating, but that’s a payday loan.

Therapy is helping me remember that it’s okay to feel things--scary, messy, ugly things--along the way. Not only is it okay, but it’s better, because then I won’t have to pay all that interest on the loan later, plus I won’t be modeling unhealthy dynamics for my kids. Therapy also helps me ground myself with the reality that when your options are all bad, your best strategy is to choose the least bad one. Determining the less bad choices requires staying in touch with my body and my feelings, so that helps with the dissociation piece, too, which, in turn, benefits my marriage. Whew, trauma work is endless, kind of like this June letter! So I’ll sign off here, with much love and anticipation for your July reply.

July

WCO: I’m late replying, and this is the first time I’ve opened my computer in four days. I just had an actual mini-vacation, which is defined here as not working for four consecutive days, staying in a place other than my house, with no obligations to do anything but relax. I haven’t had such a thing since December 2019. We all needed it, and we were all satisfied and even excited to come home, which I take as a positive thing, that “home” is still where we all want to come back to. The current situation in L.A. with the Delta variant is concerning, with the 10-year-old ineligible for vaccines. So we’re still playing things safe, though even as I write that, I think that we took two big risks this past month--one was an outdoor house party with multiple households where the kids came and went indoors without masks and everyone, as we are wont to do in before-times, close-talked! Lol. And a lot of kissing and hugging. It was like going from zero to 100 for me. And then a week later we went to another house, with about three different households present, and were only indoors. We are outside of the ten day window now, and the kid is totally fine and healthy, but it was another experience where a day later I was like, what the fuck did we do. What we did was hang out with one of my friends and her extended family, a friend who I’ve known since I was six, who came out from Chicago--she actually took the photo of me that’s on the cover of Excavation, age 16. So it felt important, and risky, and we did it, and we are all okay! But I’m not looking for many more experiences like that now, with Delta running rampant. How are you and your family navigating life now?

Your discussion of “just verbal” is so right on. Thank you for that. It’s never “just verbal,” and I imagine the only people who could ever assert that are entitled and must feel a sense of safety I, and many people, have never felt.

MASSIVE CONGRATULATIONS and a virtual ticker tape period in your honor for selling your book! I love hearing how it came together. And I absolutely agree, re: “if this is nepotism, then to what exactly do many of our white peers owe their careers?” I mean, one, it doesn’t sound like the standard route of nepotism, and also, yes, hello, nepotism is all over the place, but *especially* among our white peers. I recently heard that on a recent panel of agents, one white agent complained that “too many” manuscripts by writers of color were getting published now that weren’t up to par (not exact words, this is thirdhand), but my first response was WHAT ABOUT WHITE WRITERS who for years have had all kinds of shit published that wasn’t and isn’t good, definitely “not up to par”, weak, etc. and meanwhile have the majority of books published out there (and the material remuneration that brings). No one complains about that. That’s the norm. And who the fuck was this agent and why didn’t anyone challenge her. (I’ve tried locating the video of this panel with no luck so far.)

Anyway, I know of Nadxieli from social media, where we’ve been connected for some time, and just from that I know she’s intelligent, a person with integrity, and knows good writing when she sees it. And your book is going to soar.

I have been deep in my book proposal and sample chapters, and feel a kind of love for writing that I last remember having before I started working toward my MFA. This is pointing to an increased capacity in general that feels amazing. I’m not ready to publicly write about what I attribute it to but this action has opened up time and energy that I haven’t had...for the last seven years. There’s something about finally attending to old grief in here, too. Going back to therapy, finally deciding I have to look head-on at this grief I’ve tried burying for the last seven years after my father died.

Ahhh, therapy…lol. My therapist lives in my neighborhood and I’ve been seeing her at her house off and on for the last few years. Since I’ve returned this year, we’re meeting in her backyard. She grows vegetables and there’s a grapevine that covers just enough of the overhang above us to provide shade during our sessions. Some of my therapy sessions are starting to enter my writing. I remember feeling surprised when I included a few things from my work in Jungian analysis in my first book. I feel like it’s a protected space, but not quite like the subjects I have told myself I’ll (likely) never approach in my nonfiction/memoir work. So I’m letting what I learn in therapy arrive in the writing lately and it feels right, and an extension of reflecting on the grief (and its accessories) that I feel has been holding me back for so long.

I appreciate so much what you write about your experience of therapy. You asked about couples I see, and I realize I’m seeing the least amount of couples I’ve ever seen at the moment, but by design--I recently removed “couples” on my therapist webpage because I feel I personally can’t work as effectively with couples via video. I’ve been working via video with only one couple during the pandemic, who I’ve known for years, so the history and experience helps.

I’m curious: have you written about the feeling of dissociation? It’s something I think I’m always trying to do, maybe because I have such a strong relationship with it? Or maybe because it’s a state that I have conflicted feelings about but as I get older, I can focus on it more and then it starts to fall away. I’m still thinking this through. It reminds me of a class I’ve taught a couple of times, about “altered states” (which ultimately concludes that all our states are altered in some way), and my obsession with trying to deeply write about these states.

Please tell me how the book is coming along! What are you finding out about the process, working with an editor, etc.? And how is your hair? Lol, mine is coming out, a lot. I’m skeptical about an OTC phytoestrogen cream I’m using but I’m using it. But I do love the number 48, and I like thinking of myself arriving at this age and solidly standing or swimming in it for a while. It’s hot here, my kid had a swim class today, and I’m looking at air purifiers because I’m fearful of the next wildfire season. Wishing you energy, ease, freedom from perimenopause symptoms. <3

August

WCT: It’s August and I’m 45. And I’m in the thick of my first round of edits now. At this stage, it feels as if for every bar that’s been cleared, the “reward” is a new, higher one, and new challenges layered on top of the old persistent ones. Among those of us lucky enough to get book deals, it’s “bad form” to complain, but I think transparency about the publishing process is a necessary, corrective act, particularly for writers from marginalized identities.

I feel like I’m engaged in a weird mental balancing act, teetering between an acknowledgment of the challenges--in the text, in the industry, in the world, in my house with my two children and parents underfoot, in my body, in my mind--and compartmentalization of those conditions so that I can fall into the story and get it all done without completely losing my shit. And believe me, I lose my shit pretty much every day, usually more than once, and then I gather myself and keep going. I tell myself that as long as I return to the page, it will be okay, eventually, cumulatively.

Prioritization, the first principle of triage, is tricky here. Ideally, I would schedule a few weeks where I would allow myself to kick the can on some stuff. But we’re racing the Covid clock again. I’m trying to cram in everyone’s dental and medical stuff before the Delta variant surges in my area. This is the new normal, but I don’t know that acting like this is business as usual is going to cut it. Can we fake it ‘til we make it with a global pandemic in our midst?

So, last week, my 14-y-o got her braces off, got a retainer, and had to go back to the orthodontist twice to have the retainer readjusted. Not to be outdone, her 6-y-o little sister then had a disastrous appointment with the pediatric dentist for fillings and crowns, followed by a much more successful yet scary appointment with an oral surgeon to extract her cavity-ridden molars under sedation (during which, btw, my crimson tide came in entirely unexpectedly, 6 days early--thanks, perimenopause). My deadlines DGAF about any of this, however, so I’m kind of running on fumes and trying my best to redirect my focus again and again whenever it wavers, which is constantly. This is part of my White Rabbit anxiety, not the delicious rice-paper wrapped candy kind, alas, but the Alice in Wonderland “I’m late, I’m late” kind. That dude is an asshole.

I feel like my “process” around edits, particularly developmental/global edits, is to ricochet between fear and curiosity until the curiosity wins out and then I can finally settle into the story. I’m also noticing that I tend to reify word-countable output and delegitimize organizational and research-oriented labor. A couple of days ago, I realized that I had a major anachronism in my novel (which is set in the 1950s, partly in a historically significant sanitarium). I was initially kind of freaked out about this oversight, but then I discovered that it was a Bob Ross moment--a happy accident--because my subsequent research to correct my mistake uncovered a potential new layer to one of the storylines. So that’s good (curiosity), but also scary (fear), because it means more new stuff, which is messy, as opposed to polishing existent stuff, which is the kind of editing I find most soothing. And it has not (yet) manifested in word-countable output, so I feel like I haven’t been doing anything “real” or not doing enough, anyway. I have a persistent paranoid fantasy that my book isn’t real, that I didn’t really write it, and that one day, I might wake up, go to Google Docs, and find that it’s not there because it doesn’t exist.

To cope, I seem to have developed quite the online thrift shopping habit. It’s not the worst thing, I suppose, as far as habits go, and it brings me joy even though I barely have anywhere to go in my finds. Lately, I’ve been super inspired by menswear looks--I thrifted a couple of men’s suits, which I plan to wear with crop tops, and more practically, perhaps, I’ve just gotten into the western inflected aesthetic of the boys’ wardrobes in Footloose, the 1984 version. I’m talking workwear, sweatshirts, high-waisted denim, cowboy boots, and overalls. So if you ever feel like I suddenly remind you of Kevin Bacon, that would be why.

What you said about couples vs. individual therapy makes so much sense. Your question about dissociation was actually something that came up in our last couples session on Thursday. We alighted on the fact that my penchant for dissociation is what enables me to dive so deeply into the world of story and text, and to barely come up for air, because that’s my old safe place where I went to get away from my body. So my homework is to do small things to return to my body every day, like pay attention to how my body feels in the shower and go outside and pay attention to my sensory experience there. What you said about altered states is super interesting to me. It was the altered state of being postpartum that popped the cork off my 10-year stint of writer’s block after my 14-y-o was born and I experience flow state as an altered state that is closely aligned with dissociation. I crave it very deeply, which may be why some of my work behaviors are compulsive in nature. So I indulge it, but I also try to balance it, because I have experienced terrible burnout when I’ve just let ‘er rip. And yes, I do write about it, both in poetry and fiction, both explicitly and subtly. Dissociation (or lack thereof) informs how my characters and personages navigate their experiences. I think we can understand a lot about who a person is by the extent to which they stay in or escape their body, or the extent to which they are ambivalent about it (raising my hand here as Captain of Team Ambivalence). Tell me more about your theory of altered states and how you experience that as a writer.

Now, let’s talk about hair! I’m sorry yours is falling out, too. I just bought some saw palmetto and edible hyaluronic acid to see if they help, and will report back. I also discovered a new no-shampoo product called New Wash by Hairstory, and I love it! As someone with lots (in spite of the aforementioned hair loss) of coarse, wavy, frizz-prone hair, a sensitive scalp, and a low-maintenance preference around products, this is the best thing ever. I now only use that--no conditioner--and sometimes a little hair balm if I’m feeling frisky (or frizzy). Let me know what you think about it if you try, and let me know what you think about the estrogen cream! I will totally try it if you’re into it. You’re rocking the shit out of 48 and making me look forward to it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a mellow wildfire season and high quality air purifiers for you all.

September

WCO: Dear Wendy, Happy belated birthday!! 45 looks amazing on you. I wonder how this correspondence will find you--it’s mid-September here. I got to this late for a few reasons, the biggest one being that I had set September 6th as my self-imposed deadline to get my book proposal in to my agent. And I did it. I gave myself the past week “off” from anything writing-related, I hopped onto twitter and instagram, both of which I took the month of August away from, and it’s been weird. Like eating really bad candy I don’t even really love, but it’s sort of satisfying, just barely. After today I’m going back to my routine of only checking twitter once a week and taking more time off from ig. It’s just too easy to get sucked in and then start scrolling without any consciousness until a half hour or an hour has gone by. Talk about dissociating! It feels like social media stepped in as my altered state this past week. It’s hard to say what my everyday altered is now, though I imagine it’s hormonal. The class I’d taught sort of began, strangely, with my reading of Barbarian Days by William Finnegan. I looooove surfing videos, movies, and this book was written so well--it was like feeling embodied on waves as I read. It made me think of all the books I’ve loved where I felt a sort of high embodiment--books that beautifully describe drug experiences, or sensual eating experiences, sex, or pain...and I thought about how these all felt like altered states, places I’ve tried often in my life to be in, to stay in--and then to write about/from. I love the exercise you’re doing with yourself, paying attention to the sensory experiences you have--it’s something I try to do, too. I would even say that part of this pandemic was about being in the sensory when I didn’t want to be. I think of some tweet I read years ago where someone was addressing all the people not on any kind of drug, pharmaceutical or otherwise, and how he couldn’t believe people were raw-doggin’ life like that. Which I can relate to. Every once in a while now I’m like, damn, I’m raw-doggin’ life right now. It’s wild.

The editing process sounds challenging in the ways I’d imagine it would be. I love what you say about the “happy accident” uncovering a potential new layer to one of the storylines. I imagine that must feel amazing if overwhelming. I wonder if in the future you’ll be asked a question by an audience that will have you sharing the details of this particular aspect of your novel, what was revealed to you and how--I hope so, because it sounds so intriguing. Yes to curiosity! I’m probably most curious in my work with clients and could afford to be way more curious in my writing...it’s something I feel I haven’t always been skillful about and am just recently noticing and trying to bring more curiosity to my work. It seems that’s when the layers get unearthed. Like I wonder if I ask my manuscript/myself questions the way I do with clients--open-ended, curious, honest questions--what else will open up?

I totally agree about transparency about the publishing process and I’m open to anything you want to share about that. Do you have hard dates as to when your edits need to be done? As new layers emerge is there flexibility in working with your deadlines? What do you ask of your family in helping you meet all these demands? And another question I have been considering for myself, too: do you imagine you’ll be able to do a writing retreat of some kind in the future? Are you applying anywhere or thinking of applying anywhere, or does that feel like a dream? (I waver between these.) I hope September has been good to you. Wendy. Sending much love.

October

WCT: Congratulations on sending in your proposal! That’s major! I saw you mention it on social media (ironically) and felt bolstered and inspired as I slogged through my September. I’ve also been really inspired by your regulation of social media and have experimented with emulating you. I haven’t been as consistent as you are about only looking once a week, but I have posted and interacted drastically less and it’s been an interesting exercise. While I notice expected outcomes like decreased anxiety and increased focus, I’ve also noticed feelings of guilt coming up, as if my decreased presence might be construed as a form of abandonment by people I normally interact with, along with some concern that I might be harming my own graphic novel publishing business and/or disappointing my fiction publisher by losing my foothold on the algorithms. But then I remind myself that first and foremost comes the making of the books and if I need to reallocate energy from social media to writing, then the benefit of that ought to outweigh the cost.

I’m happy to tell you, however, that yesterday, on the final day of September, I sent in this round of edits on the novel. It was a really heavy lift for me for a few reasons, one of which was… Lyme Disease! Those ticks are no joke--I’m pretty sure I got bitten in my own backyard. I never found the tick, but I got a rash, so thankfully, I caught it pretty early and am almost through my 28 days of Doxycyline, but wow, holy symptoms, Batman! Arthritis in my fingers and knees, fatigue, tachycardia, increased anxiety, but most distressing of all, brain fog. Oof! I could feel the change in mental focus and stamina within literally 24 hours of starting the antibiotics. It was wild.

I wound up producing about 90 new pages on this edit and allowing things to get messy, so I anticipate that the next round will involve a lot of cherry-picking and refining those expansions. Developmental edits are really scary for me as opposed to the yummy (to me) process of tinkering with the language in line edits. It’s like the difference between renovation and redecoration. I was surprised by how my writing clock changed on this draft--I normally write most intensively in the mornings on my laptop, but I got through this round of edits by making lots of notes on my iPhone in the very early morning or in the middle of the night if I woke up, and then transferring those notes to my laptop in the morning and getting to the most intensive kind of writing in the afternoon or early evening. I noticed that it was hard for me to accept this change in the sense that I was worried it meant that what I was doing wasn’t truly productive or “real,” even though I kept telling myself to trust the process, trust my subconscious, and trust that cumulatively, it would get done. This leads me to believe that I’m a lot less flexible than I think I am. What are your writing rhythms like? Do you find that they are consistent or do they sometimes shift? And if they shift, do you freak out like I do?

My team at Flatiron has been really supportive and like any new relationship, we are learning each other. I’m also finding that I’m learning more about myself and my needs, too. My current deadline for delivery is in January but I believe there’s some wiggle room if I need it. My family was really helpful, too. My mom took over the vast majority of the cooking and my husband picked up the childcare slack so that I could lock myself away as much as I needed. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this--gratitude, but also distrust, guilt, fear, shame, and lack of entitlement. I grew up in the kind of chaotic environment where there were very few accommodations made to support my schoolwork but very high expectations set around my performance, and I felt like I had to sneak it in under the radar, especially creative work. Plus, I felt pressure to make it look easy when it was in fact very hard for me, so admitting that my novel is my top priority right now feels incredibly scary, like a form of hubris, or simply like something that I’ve never felt entitled to do before. It’s way outside my comfort zone. And I think it’s a result of mixing family of origin dysfunction with immigration trauma, racism, and sexism. Sigh. I’m really curious about what your relationship to this stuff is and how you navigate it at home.

Maybe this is also why the idea of going to a writing retreat doesn’t appeal to me. The thought of being at one fills me with anxiety and dread! Without even getting into the problematic politics of those places and even if I were to do my own retreat, I just think I’d blow my entire time there excavating my layers of issues and getting nothing done. But I am working on greater self-acceptance so I can get out of my own way more, so maybe eventually I’ll get to a point where I could do one. What do you think of writing retreats?

What are your next steps on your WIP now that you’ve submitted your proposal? I hope October is witchy and wonderful for you!

P.S. Every few days, I think about you “raw-doggin’ life” and I feel what must surely be one of those German compound words meaning both awestruck and amused.

November

WCO: LAUGHING (still) at “raw-doggin’” and, yeah, aside from awestruck and amused I think of the meme of the cat peering out of a bathroom sink wearing a Merlin hat--the face on that cat--there is awe and also overwhelm, like the cat’s eyes can’t contain it all. And I’m still over here, raw-doggin’, though I did have one hard cider at an informal outdoor meeting I had with my film/tv agent. But that’s it. And I got a headache afterward.

I love hearing your process, how you allowed yourself to get messy, and especially allowing yourself to trust your subconscious. When I think of my own rhythms, I’m finding that it’s changed a lot in the last several years than what it was like before. Now, since I make myself write most days (aside from morning pages, which I don’t make myself do but just feel compelled to do), there is material to work with later. I recently began assigning myself subjects to write about, and it has to be two handwritten pages, minimum. I will say, though, that I completely let go of most writing in September and October. I think turning in my book proposal was like a signal to take some intense resting time. My episodes of afib also increased by a lot, so I felt forced into taking it easier these past two months. I’ve just undergone two medication changes and I have had a few days with ZERO afib, which I haven’t had in literally months, so I’m cautiously enjoying that and the writing is coming back little by little. Re: meds--I am so glad to hear you caught the Lyme in time and the meds worked for you!

Also during this break I allowed myself to be on social media whenever I wanted, and I kept likening it to eating all the candy I want, good and bad and whatever candy, and as one might imagine, I felt sick. I don’t even like candy, per se--I really only like chocolate. So these past few months were an uncomfortable reminder that I do do better without social media--like, I will always appreciate Instagram for its frequent lack of text, but Twitter is something I love/hate intensely. So for this month, I am removing myself from both. I know what you’re saying about algorithm worry, but you are also right, that that energy that gets reallocated to writing is worth way more.

As it happens, I am closed to new clients until January, and down to the fewest number of clients I’ve had in years, in part because I wanted these months to have more space for writing, and I knew I might be scheduling a heart procedure. That procedure just got scheduled, so I will be having the inside of my heart scarred Dec. 29th. It’s just wild. It’s called ablation, but I really don’t like the sound of that word. It is literally a scarification of the heart, though, which I find intriguing as a concept. So I have some time before then to get some of this writing work in shape, I hope, barring any other medical or other interruptions...

I’m glad to hear you’re getting support at home to continue your heavy work on the novel. For myself, I’ve been insistent on having writing time and energy for the last fifteen years--I’m remembering that with my ex, we came to an agreement that I would work twenty hours a week at a job so that I could have roughly twenty hours a week to work on writing. I carried that philosophy and way of being into this relationship, which I’ve been in for thirteen years now, so it feels very much like an ongoing acknowledgement of the importance this work has on my life. I’ve told people--partners, friends, audiences--that I recall the time in my life when I could not do any writing whatsoever because of my job and obligations outside of it--and that that was the first time as an adult that I felt suicidal (though I sometimes will joke that I felt homicidal). This has made me pretty much demand respect for the time and energy and space I need to write. It has at times felt uncomfortable, and, yes, entitled, and sometimes still feels this way. And/but I also think about how my kid is viewing this importance, and how it can be a model of what it’s like to prioritize creative work. My partner is totally supportive about all of it, materially, physically, emotionally, which feels exceptional and rare, too.

Funny that you mention retreats because I’d been wondering if I’m ready to apply for some. The trouble is that I now love the dog we rescued at the beginning of the pandemic so much I don’t want to be separated from her?!? And she is attached to me in particular in the household and I don’t want to stress her out?!? It feels strange to say these things because I was fine leaving my cats to themselves while traveling or leaving them in my partner’s care when I used to travel all the time...but this dog feels so different. So at the moment, I’m not going to be looking into any retreats. I went to two in the past, both at Hedgebrook, which were extremely amazing and formative for me, but those were in the years before I had a kid, and life just feels so different now--going away alone for a week or two or longer (?!) feels much harder. I have fantasies of maybe feeling more willing to do this in a few years. Anyway, I hope to feel differently by then. I do think writing retreats are an incredible opportunity to have time alone with the work--but I also know, from my minimal experience, that if you do get in your own way, which is easily possible, it can work against your intentions. That happened at my second Hedgebrook retreat. I allowed some voices to take over during my time there and next thing I knew, the retreat was over. But the first time? Absolute heaven. (It’s also such a singular experience, that place.)

As you move closer to your due date for the novel, I wonder what else you’re thinking of, and how much do you allow yourself to think of your novel’s future? Do you have time and space to contemplate how 2021 differed from 2020? Do you have time and space to consider how you envision 2022, and if so, what does that look like?

Much love and warmth to you as we head deeper into fall. Xo

December

WCT: Wendy! I can’t believe we’re at the end of the year and the end of this correspondence. I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I wonder how you’re navigating the intersections of health, mental health, family, therapeutic work, and writing work now that you’re approaching the date of your ablation. I will be thinking of you very hard on that day, holding space, and sending all my good energy.

Part of what I’ve loved about this correspondence is how, in being afforded a behind the scenes view of how your book sausage is made, I can learn by examining our similarities and differences. I didn’t do a MFA, so I don’t really have a writing cohort, plus I’m such an introvert that being able to share about the writing life on this level is extra valuable to me. For instance, I think you’ve developed a more appropriate and healthy sense of entitlement to personal time and space, whereas for cultural and familial dysfunction issues (like parentification), I have a lot to correct in that zone. Something else I’ve learned from you is that personal time and creative time are separate and distinct categories, especially if your creative output is monetized, so letting one consume the other creates imbalance. I think the lines are so murky among creative professionals that it’s easy to miss the fact that the normalization of sacrificing personal space in order to produce more art is another form of labor exploitation, another permutation of the Protestant work ethic/ideology mobilized to turn us into better workers. We valorize and mythologize the image of the writer pulling all-nighters on their manuscript, living and breathing for their art, but we really should be questioning why.

I wish I could say that I’m done with this draft, but it’s taking much longer than I hoped or expected. In the end, I think this is both practically okay and creatively for the best because there are some parts of the writing process that just can’t be forced. The journey I’m taking with this novel continues to hold up a mirror to many of my longstanding issues and vulnerabilities. I realize, for example, that I put pressure on myself to work quickly even when it’s not expected of me, and this tendency is rubbing up against the task at hand, which is to literally re-type every word of the manuscript while editing it this round. The task is designed to slow things down, so why can’t I just let go and roll with it? I can see how the exercise itself is objectively beneficial because many details of language and flow that I would have otherwise glossed over are being picked up, but I’ve got emotional whiplash from feeling good about this methodical work one day and terrified/overwhelmed the next. I can barely imagine what life will be like when I’m done with revisions, but I do have 2022 plans to finish writing two graphic novels I have in development, a Middle Grade one and a YA one.

Something else I’ve realized is that this period after selling my novel represents the first time I’ve experienced my work being commodified before it has completed its developmental stage. Normally, once development is done, I’m fine with the process of transforming it into a product, but now, I’m experiencing a kind of simultaneous dual perspective--creative/developmental vs. commercial/material--that’s disorienting for me on an emotional level, as one confers an undue amount of pressure on the other. All the usual doubts at the end of a book’s development seem amplified. Don’t get me wrong. I love the fact that my publisher allows their authors to be looped in on the business end, but I think for me, with my particular psychology, it’s the mixing of stages that freaks me out. At the same time, I bet what’s scary for me may be incentivizing for other authors.

In the past, my go-to self-soothing method around finishing books, which is always a vulnerable thing, was to tell myself that I just had to keep my head down and take care of the book as well as I could, and when it was out of my hands, it was no longer my business. But with these new parameters/variables, I can’t use this method anymore.

I think there may be an old, embedded trigger at play here, too, an emotional landmine left over from childhood in this landscape. It goes something like: What right do I have to whine about a “problem” that I’m astonishingly lucky to even have? That’s a very old narrative and I guess I’ve internalized the shaming and silencing of having a “problem.” When I had issues at my fancy private school, my fancy college, and fancy grad school, I didn’t feel like I was allowed to complain since my presence there felt so precarious and fortuitous in the first place. So that tells me this is rooted in race, class, and gender, too. I mean, really, what isn’t?

If we believe we have to be twice as good for half as much, how do we pay the emotional and material costs of living up to those expectations? And once we recognize the toxicity of accepting the toll it takes, how do we begin to shift that belief system in the context of persistent inequality? Furthermore, creatively speaking, how do we then work around all this to enable ourselves to write? Not only do we have to be twice as good for half as much, but we have to work through twice as many problems.

I feel like everything always boils down to my favorite Audre Lorde quote, which I already mentioned in one of my earlier letters, but I think it bears repeating in this final one: “The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.” I’m committed to this weeding process for the rest of my life in spite of my suspicion that even at the end of my life, it won’t be done. How many generations will it take to accomplish this?

Sending you love and solidarity in living and writing with integrity, and in our shared project of uprooting that piece of the oppressor within each of us.

Wendy Chin-Tanner is the author of the poetry collections Turn (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014) and Anyone Will Tell You, (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019), co-author of the graphic novel American Terrorist (AWBW, 2012), co-editor of Embodied: An Intersectional Feminist Comics Poetry Anthology (AWBW, 2021), and author of the forthcoming novel King of the Armadillos (Flatiron Books, 2023).

Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir, Hollywood Notebook, and the dreamoir Bruja. She is a psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles.