Field notes from reality ranch
Oaky Chardonnay, the apocalypse, and brutal, bruised honesty
It’s 2012, and I’m drifting further away from myself in the aftermath of my divorce. I stick fingers in my ears (lalala) and sip oaky Chardonnay, ignoring the oily smell of gasoline and emotional bile in my throat. In the smoke, I decide to take a screenwriting class by the lakes in Copenhagen.
After watching Six Feet Under and deeply connecting to its characters, I’m convinced it’s time to write my screenplay: a series about a group of strangers suddenly thrust together in a mall after the apocalypse. The Breakfast Club meets The Walking Dead.
The writing professor, Rhea, a playwright and director originally from NYC, seems frustrated after reading my scene.
“Is this really how someone would react after everything’s been torn from them?”
Since it’s rhetorical, I sit still, gazing at the curls struggling to break free from her loose ponytail.
“Writing real characters, not waxy imitations, requires honesty. You, as a writer, need to be honest with yourself. Your characters are an extension of you. They can only be as real as you are with yourself.”
Over a decade later, I finally understood what Rhea was trying to tell me.
Writing Welcome to the Creative Club was an act of honesty, which became more brutal when Shanna, my editor, asked me to write a chapter about my divorce. She said it would be unsatisfying for the reader if I mentioned the divorce but didn’t show what happened.
I had to answer a question that used to make my face hot: “Why did you get divorced?”
As if I could stitch the complex factors that not only created the fabric of our marriage but ripped it apart into a neat, satisfying sentence. So I’d answer, “It’s complicated.”
It was. There was love with terms and conditions that I eventually broke.
After I wrote the first draft, Shanna said, “You don’t have to publish this, you know?”
She could see how hard it was for me to write. I was pulling out a box I shelved a long time ago. The way I perceived this chapter was stuck in the past. I looked through an old, less self-compassionate, shame-and-blame lens.
Shanna said, “Look again. This time with your wise, loving Present Pia eyes.”
Rewriting this story pulled me underwater, breath bubbling to the surface, hair swaying like algae.
I wrote and breathed my way through it.
The published chapter feels raw, real, and right (still hard to read).
That’s when Rhea’s words flashed in my mind.
Art is honesty. And it can be brutal and beautiful.
It captures what it means to be a human on this spinning rock. A vulnerability that connects us to characters, stories, and each other.
Often, what you’re meant to create is found in what you’re avoiding.
I avoided dark, hard emotions in myself and my characters (I lost the 50-page screenplay when my MacBook died on a transcontinental flight, and that was the end for the mall apocalypse).
The book I was meant to write came to me when I was present and willing to open doors to dark rooms. Some of them were even filled with the scattered light of disco balls.
So, what are you avoiding?
The belly flop into your depth stings. But then you get to see who you become and what you create as you sputter above the waves.
Keep creating,
