The Best Place to Start
When things feel heavy.
Hi friends.
I hope everyone reading this is safe and sound.
I’ve been getting up at 5 AM again to write. I took a few days off from the early rising to travel to Savannah. Then I thought my schedule would be off while I finished the rest of my tour but then suddenly there was no more tour. I’m happy to make the most of the daylight hours though—it’s grim and gloomy here right now, and I want to sustain the momentum I had built up earlier last week. And really, the most secure place for me right now feels like my novel.
I had to cancel my Nashville event because of the snowstorm and my Los Angeles events because of the terrible fires. Not a complaint—I am grateful to be home in my quiet house. I’m just noting it. Noting the world. This is the way it works now. The climate impacts everything.
I was remembering, too, this fall when I did that literary festival in Ireland and there was one day of it that was shockingly stormy—like no one could have expected that kind of weather—and it was because we were seeing the tail end of Hurricane Helene heading in from America. It had made it halfway across the world.
Obviously there are thousands and thousands of GoFundMes out there related to the heartbreaking situation in Los Angeles. I will point to this list if you are looking for a place to donate, but there are many other lists available online. I know there are just so many things to donate to in this life, and also I know sometimes we could use some help ourselves. I see so many people online talking about how they wish they could donate to everyone. Do what you can, when you can.
But I am glad we all care. I know we do. I can just feel it. Caring is the best place to start.
Sometimes it is hard to write about all these things. Sometimes it is hard to sit down with yourself and process everything in the world, let alone your own life, even if your own life is fine. Maybe that’s why I love fiction so much. The ultimate place to hide.
But we live in the now. All the bad news flashes and the texts and the have-you-heards. Sometimes we talk about it with each other, and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes what we’re supposed to do is shut up and listen.
And if it becomes too painful for you to consume all that, process it, I understand. You can power down. Just don’t power down forever.
I liked what our pal Mira Jacob wrote recently:
I keep hearing people I love saying they are going to check out, keep their heads down and just get through it. And I get that. I really do...I’d just like to ask one thing of those of you who might happen to read this, which is to remember that if you keep your heads down, you will miss each other.
Sometimes I worry that I’m feeling less lately. But also it might just be that I’ve felt all these feelings before, and I’ve got some systems in place to deal with them, and I’m tapping into those wells to carry me through.
I do know this: No one knows how to do this exactly right.
But I always try and write. And it always makes me feel better. I always recommend writing a few sentences down when things feel complicated and tough and heartbreaking.
At least you’ll really know how you feel. At least you’ll have checked in with yourself. And then, maybe, you’ll be able to help someone else.
Take care of yourselves,
Jami
You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on bluesky and instagram.
My memoir project has been sidelined due to the fires, plus caregiving for my 26-year-old daughter post-surgery (complex surgery from a ski accident with hardware embedded). I also am giving myself a break tomorrow from publishing my newsletter (which I publish every single Wednesday; I only skipped a week once before in its 3+ years). Writing about myself feels like a privilege I don't have now and don't particularly care about at the moment.
Last Tuesday when she was in surgery and I was in the waiting room, I started getting texts about the fire. I'm in Colorado, but my elderly in-laws live in the Pacific Palisades in my husband's boyhood home. They evacuated (in a painfully slow, confused way, exacerbated by their age) with only a few essentials and lost everything. This past week, I've been in management mode, trying to keep my shit together while caring for daughter, getting a hotel room for my in-laws, and searching for a furnished rental for them for the coming months (so far, impossible to find). My husband left for LA to help his parents cope. It's not just the loss of a home and its belongings—they're coping with the loss of everything familiar, every routine, every friend with whom they'd connect at the stores and community centers now gone. They suddenly face a permanent move to somewhere else, to be determined. My mother-in-law is showing signs of cognitive stress/decline in the aftermath, prompting the added question of, is now the time to steer them toward assisted living (which they don't want)? I am traveling there in a couple of days to help my daughter transition back to her LA home (which stresses me out, having her there, in a house with stairs when she's on crutches, wondering if a fire will break out near her) but she has to get back, and I need to visit my in-laws and help them too. My brain is on high alert, scanning CNN and NYT for latest updates while attuned to alerts from the Watch Duty app.
I try to journal and turn to my project for comfort. I recall advice somewhere in your "1000 Words" book, about trying to touch the project daily (or almost daily). That's what I'm trying to do, even if just to revisit a few paragraphs here and there. I cannot do the hard, thoughtful work of revising its narrative arc and moving around text blocks. I can only draft a few scenes. I yearn to get back to it when not managing a crisis—to the feeling that I can refocus on myself and my projects, and care about them rather than feeling they're not particularly relevant or important.
Thank you for this post Jami. And thank you for caring. I live in Los Angeles and the last few days have just been awful. While my family and I are still lucky to have our home, so many people in our lives have lost so much. It's been utterly heart wrenching to witness and I've never felt more helpless. It has also made it incredibly challenging to write. BUT, I know that I need to. Not only because deadlines loom but because I know writing, if even a little, will help me feel better, and help me process what I am feeling.