Writer in San Francisco, CA
Crisp air pulls across chrysanthemum curls,
a glance, a brace against a rusted streetlight, smoke swirls
from plush lips, she is everything but what she is not.
Aqua moon sinks low into the mosaic Bay, night bleeding
into the fog to press against silky skin, wet and glistening.
A hint of liquor lingers on breath, a steady indulgence of
downers to saturate the ache.
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It’s another year, another November, and NaNoWriMo is here. I’m about nine days too late for writing this introduction post, but better late than never, right?
Around Halloween, I was starting to agonize over what I was going to write in November. Should I try short stories? Should I even try at all? On the first day of NaNoWriMo, I ended up writing about a thousand words of a nonfiction piece that turned into an assignment for an online workshop I’m taking provided by The Writer’s Studio. Oh well.
I decided I didn’t want to expand on that nonfiction piece for 50,000 words, so I scrapped it and wrote three hundred words about a teen girl being hunted by a coven of witches. I can’t shake witches; they’re in my blood.
No, I don’t want to write another novel about witches, so I chucked that idea out the window and started going over the novels I attempted to complete for NaNoWriMo’s in 2020 and 2019. Low and behold, the two novels I had failed to complete are still vaguely interesting.
I decided to pick up the one from 2019, titled Jack’s Story, and run with it. Now I’m editing about 17k words as I catch up in the story. It’s not that bad, I’m surprised, and for once, it appears I’ve written part of a novel that isn’t tainted by the supernatural…for now.
So that’s where I’m at; I’m going to work on Jack’s Story for this month and see where it takes me.
A brief synopsis of Jack’s Story:
Jack is a twenty-something downbeat guy trying to manage his mental illness when he finds out one of his ex-girlfriends was brutally murdered. As he reconnects with family and friends, his past comes back to haunt him.
Check out my NaNoWriMo2021 project here!
I think finishing this novel is a good challenge for me this month while I juggle the workshop. While I’m working on all of this, I’ve been revamping my Medium blog, prepping to post a selection of nonfiction pieces centered around San Francisco. So far, I have one piece published, and you can check it out here.
Stay tuned!
Are you participating in NaNoWriMo 2021? Let’s talk! Leave a comment below or message me. I want to hear from you!
She slips into something more comfortable, a beaming
grin with sly eyes and slinks towards the edge of the
water. A toe in the icy blue, a shiver up her leg. Today is
the day the sirens scream will alert everyone. Today is
the day, the froth of clouds above will become the
canvass to a scene of despair below. She untangles her
bikini and inches into the water, drowning out the sounds
of the children playing, the people laughing on the beach with
each sloshing step. Closer, closer to the depths, another shiver races
up her spine to rest at the base of her neck like a necklace of ice.
She takes in a breath, but not too big, shudders, and dives into the black.
I haven’t been posting as many reflections on Life During COVID-19, politics, things happening, and adjusting to living in SF. I’ve been caught up in catching up. Between work, writing, and numerous trips back and forth between California and Utah, I feel like I haven’t had the time to sit, reflect, and write. So this post is a little warbly, moving all over the place as I start to get back on track.
Feeling Fall in SF
Subtly, the turn happens, and I can feel it in the air. It’s October, and fall is here. My boyfriend told me when he lived in SF all those years ago; he could never precisely remember what time of year it was when he recalled events because there aren’t drastic visible changes that mark the turning of seasons, at least not like in Utah.
But I’ve noticed, the few trees in the city, they look different. The heavy salty scent of water in the air is different even when mixed with the aromas of piss, shit, and trash. The change is abstruse, but I can see it. There is a Fall in SF, and I am enjoying its peculiar attributes.
The Roaring Blue Angels
I am munching on toasted honey wheat slices smeared with artichoke antipasto. I’ve drunk my coffee, and I’m trying to ignore the roaring Blue Angels as they sweep over the city, reminding me of the stories of Nazis dropping bombs on London during WWII. I’ve had a fear of planes flying low, the sound, the unknown, waiting to hear something more. Explosions and screams. I think this came from watching the Twin Towers fall into rubble on TV when I was a kid. Being told it was real, it’s not a movie; people are dead—murdered. It’s stuck with me.
Something that’s lived in the back of my mind, that death can strike like lightning, taking us out in an instant. I can’t take a moment for granted since then. Constantly aware that one moment leads into another, and then suddenly, it could abruptly end.
These feelings are so closely linked with the seasons changing into fall, my favorite time of year, when decay is beautiful, and a primordial power surges like rushing waves over every single thing.
A Month of Halloween Vibes
Halloween is approaching, but the month of October feels like a month-long celebration. It oozes from every fluctuation in the air, a magnetism that whips out from some other world. Could this possibly be the veil thinning that I’ve read so much about?
This year is different. I’m living in SF. The pandemic is ongoing, now over 700,000 dead, and I feel like the country continues to suffer from whiplash. Trump, politics, murder, the government continuing to neglect the people.
It’s like blood in the mouth, the taste of it hard to swallow, so it just pours over lips and drips to the ground, staining that spot indefinitely. The traumas, the life-changing events they’ve marked me, stained me in ways I’m not sure I can figure out right now.
Creeping and Living in SF
I’m listening to Thom York’s Creep (Very 2021 Remix). The rhythm has been slowed down to a bone-aching pulse. The eight-minute remix somehow sounds like a brand new song, but it’s so familiar. And yes, it feels like 2021; the stagnation, the PTSD, the hollowness of it all. And somehow, it all mingles with my first experience of fall in SF and, soon, Halloween.
I love this city. I thought maybe this would be an excellent place to rest for a few years before moving up the coast. But now I’m sure that this is a permanent home. Where else can I blend in so seamlessly? Where else can I experience so much culture and diversity within forty-seven square miles? SF has history, it’s alive, and underneath it all, there is something adoringly spooky about it that I can’t help but revel in.
An End to a Prelude
So, consider this short blog post a prelude to what I’m thinking will be a much longer piece focusing on the pandemic. I’m getting back into gear, and I will be posting more poems and prepping for NaNoWriMo 2021.
Until then: I have a few questions for readers.
If you live in SF, do you notice a change in the seasons? What do you think of the Blue Angels? Are there any spooky stories about SF that you’d like to share?
Leave a comment, start a conversation, or ask me a question below.
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Today, I published “A Collection of Pandemic Poems.” This collection is FREE and can be Downloaded or Printed at flipsnack.com. I will be ordering a small batch of printed copies which I plan on sending to those I dedicated this collection to.
A Collection of Pandemic Poems
by Alina Happy Hansen
In March 2020, I was laid off due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While I was unemployed, I wrote poems for friends and family that gave me compensation in return. This collection is comprised of those poems and is solely dedicated to them.
Last year was a wild ride. I was unemployed for months during the beginning of the pandemic. I spent eight or more hours a day searching for remote work, applying to jobs, refining my resume, and blogging. In the end, I applied to over 450 jobs before I found a full-time remote position.
During that time, I decided to write personal poems for $, and the response was incredible. Friends and family reached out and ordered poems in exchange for any amount of compensation they wanted to give.
Each poem took me hours to create, from writing various drafts to blending my handwritten poem with carefully crafted designs on cardstock. The poems were framed with unique art, hand-colored, and then mailed to the recipient.
These poems are one-of-a-kind unique pieces. I decided not to include scanned copies of the originals in this collection because I felt those belonged solely to the friends and family I made them for.
For the past few months, I had working on how to publish this collection. In the beginning, I was going to design an entire zine by hand and then make copies the old-fashioned way (using a copier in a print shop). I realized going that route was time-consuming and would waste paper products. I then settled on formatting the collection into a digital zine which turned into this, a flipbook! I chose Flipsnack because it was easy to use, and it gave me complete control over editing the essential elements.
Now that I’ve completed this goal, I am refocusing on editing the first five chapters of the novel I’ve been working on for the last few years. It’s been a very long and tedious journey, but I love my book and am committed to fine-tuning it as close to perfection as possible.
Starting next month, I will participate in a Fiction and Poetry workshop by The Writers Studio in San Francisco. This course is fully remote and takes eight weeks to complete. I am so excited to be in another workshop! I think I miss being in school. (I’ve already begun to research out Master’s programs in San Francisco).
I want to say thank you to all of my friends and family that made this collection possible. I really can’t say it enough. Without your continuous support of my writing, I honestly don’t think I would be where I am now. It means the world to me that such incredible people support me.
Thank you!