Category: me

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Author Author

I am represented by a literary agency now and, without going into great detail, my novel has undergone some major changes. Mainly structural. The story hasn’t changed, most of the plotting is still intact, no new characters. But some major changes were made and these changes happened very quickly, and as a result I don’t think what I surrendered (because no experienced author would willingly call any work “done”) was the best effort I could have made. And so, when I realized the extent to which the book needed first-aid, I told my agent to hit the brakes – stop distributing the book and ask those publishers who have not yet read it to not, please and thank you.

I’m writing this from the perspective of someone who has just finished, if finished may be used about any art form, a necessary revision. I am relatively new to this – not writing, but revising. There is an art to revision which is as unique as the art of writing itself. This may sound alien to many, but to fellow writers – novelists especially because of the weight of material we are burdened with – this is a necessary conversion: the realization that you cannot know everything, do everything in your first, second, or even seventh revision. And that potentially great ideas not only require blending with the rest of the work, but the time and space to be seen again with fresh eyes and, if need be, changed once again.

When you don’t respect the process – of writing, of revision (because the two are intertwined like the snakes on a caduceus) – you risk damaging your gains. I ended up not happy with what went out under my name and I am not the first nor will I be the last reluctant person to go through this sometimes necessary experience. I have spent the past four months rejigging, reconsidering, reaching deeper, and sometimes just removing clutter. I worked on my laptop, and after that I had the manuscript printed so that I could look at it like a real book, so that I could see what you can’t easily see on a computer screen. I’ve switched and changed, shortened and lengthened, pared-down and elaborated for clarity.

I think it’s ready now. If not “done” then “done enough”. Or, at the very least, I’m done. And, corny and cliché though it may sound, lessons have been learned.

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The Pause Button

I don’t believe our identities ever settle, to become static. This isn’t to say that they fly willy-nilly like laundry in a windstorm. There are two great wheels: the one inside of us and the one outside. Both move forward regardless of our individual philosophies.

The outside wheel is time. It is the inevitable movement of progress, the passing-on of events, linking like the teeth of a sprocket on a bicycle chain. Whether we stand still or keep moving, this wheel keeps turning.

The inside wheel is our own development: our learning, the expansion of our comprehension of things, as well as our personal growth. It also keeps moving, again, whether we stand still or move.

Development is growth, and growth is sometimes painful, especially when we suspect we have been travelling on a path which does not intuitively serve our needs any longer. The temptation can be strong to “hit the pause button”; to stop looking at how the outer wheel affects the inner wheel, the learnings contained within their interplay. I’m not sure if it would be fair to call this wilful ignorance, but some would.

I’ve known people, particularly those from school, who seem to have “hit the pause button” at some point in their late teens or early twenties: they dress the same, they obsess about the same music, they ask the same questions they asked at that age – it can seem as if they are exist in a still photo of a past universe. I speculate that they see the larger wheel, the world, turning (one cannot wilfully blind oneself from seeing this), but don’t wish to acknowledge that the inner wheel, identity/personality, still turns and evolves also.

It makes me sad, and yes I realize that is a judgement. I don’t wish to categorize people since we live in a society which already puts such an emphasis on a divisive winners/losers binary. It makes me sad because I have a relational tether to those who are in this way: I know what it’s like. It’s also quite common.

I could speculate all day about whether this is fear-induced, shame-induced, whether (from a psychoanalytically informed perspective) there is a concern about narcissistic rupture at play in this. All I know is that it exists, and that the temptation for some to “keep things the way they are”, regardless that this is kind of impossible, has a strong lure.

 

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My Psychotherapy Blog

As some of you (now more of you) know, I recently began a practice as a psychotherapist. I have a website, which gets a fair bit of traffic (allowing that summer is a traditionally slow time of the year), but recently I added an adjunctive blog.

The purpose was to get more of me out there, rather than have people rely on their preconceptions of what a psychotherapist is/does just by staring at my business card. I figured it would help both me and potential clients (including curious onlookers) deal up-front with questions that often go unasked yet which people would like answered.

For example: Do I need to know what’s wrong with me in order to see a therapist? Will I lose my creativity if I see one?

These are some of the things people ask, sometimes in passing, sometimes directly to me. I was inspired to address them, if only so that I could clarify the process of therapy.

That said, it’s a challenge. Unlike this space where I can tear away at preconceptions without concern for who I may be offending, I have to alter the timbre of my voice when blogging for the benefit of those who may be potential clients – it’s not always cut and dry. I ran into this recently with a post I wrote about men and how men tend to have preconceptions about psychotherapy (and how some of this may have to do with the language/imagery predominant in the latest barrage of public service announcements). My partner brought to my attention that what I’d wrote (and published) was in fact meant for this blog, not the one I originally thought it was intended for. So…I went back and changed the voice, as if I were revising a short story.

The lesson? Know your audience. People curious about psychotherapy don’t need to read hard-hitting op/ed-style commentary – the challenge was to go back and revise what I’d done so that, rather than focusing on a political critique of the way society isolates men from seeking help and agitating for personal growth, I retreated/reverted/went back to the more digestible core point of therapy is good for men, too.

Perhaps I will post both versions here to demonstrate how I revised it. In any case, feel free to visit the other blog (and tell your friends).

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A Better Person

Before I had an office, and well-before I started seeing clients, I was with my wife and friends at a busy restaurant. We were talking over the enjoyable izakaya ruckus and, as was the case with friends who didn’t know at the time, I mentioned how I was switching careers, to be a psychotherapist.

Telling someone, whether you know them well or not at all, that you are going to be a psychotherapist is like telling someone that you’ve written a novel (*ahem*). They inevitably want to know more, and that inquisitiveness often leads to questions that, at least for the first few months, you struggle to form into sound-bite-sized snippets.

I think I was able to describe the hows and whys and whats effectively, and was about to reward myself with a slug from my porcelain choko of sake when I was asked: “Do you feel pressure to be a better person?”

Continue reading “A Better Person”

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The Ides of March

Basement: mostly done.

We pushed ourselves hard to get everything (doors, baseboards, furniture) cut/fitted/assembled. The result is beautiful. The space is marvellous. I could not have asked for a more comfortable working environment.

Novel: revised, but sifting through new notes.

I spent two months grinding through a very large, complex recommendation on my novel – that it be written in 1st-person rather than 3rd-person. A tall order. And yet, I went through with it because it made perfect sense. The narrative style I was using was such an intimate sounding 3rd-person that switching to 1st-person felt more natural – the fact that I was using 1st-person for the follow-up novel I was already working on also helped.

The new notes only regard the first part of the book – not a huge deal, and yet I will admit that I’m tired of going back to this beast. I tell myself: if it makes it better, if it improves my understanding of storytelling, if it’s still my book in the end – then it is worth it.

Film job: crazy.

Dealing with battlefields in Los Angeles, Toronto, and Seoul, it’s not hard to imagine that I’m getting emails 24-hours a day. Most of the people I’m working with are professionals who are dedicated to making this project a success. Some of the people are, for various reasons, driving me crazy. That’s pretty much par for the course.

Psychotherapy practice: saw first client.

Therapist-client confidentiality notwithstanding, I am happy to finally be getting my practice off the ground. It is a new beginning and it feels great in all the right places.

 

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Why Psychotherapist (pt. 2 – tangent)

In the course of moving towards a practice (which has begun, if gradually), my wife and I have been renovating our basement for nearly the past year. Yes, one of those reno’s. The purpose of which was so that I could work out of the house as opposed to rent office space (which is not cheap in downtown Toronto).

It’s been a learning experience: learning about renovations, learning about doing long bouts of manual labour beside a loved one, learning about the ways in which two people can live together, be married and all that, yet have different approaches toward planning and executing large-scale operations. On this note, it’s also been about communicating, dealing with stress, and knowing when to take a break (from the basement).

Most recently, my wife – who is an amazing designer – designed a compact website for my practice: please visit. With the basement almost done, and a website online (heck, I also have business cards), it seems all of the hallmarks (and clichés) of “change” are ringing true.

Of course, the practice is in its infancy. I am still working hard on a Hollywood 3D dance film, and waiting to hear back from my agent (can’t get used to typing those two words) about the most recent revision to my novel that I submitted.

I will let you know how it proceeds.

Here’s an interesting question someone asked me, when they heard I was studying to practice as a psychotherapist. I will discuss this in an upcoming blog post:

“Do you feel pressure to be a better person?”

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Why Psychotherapist? (pt. 1)

It would seem a bit of a 180° turn, to go from someone who works behind the scenes of film and TV shows to becoming a psychotherapist. It’s not a dramatic story, but over time I’ve found that my strengths have always been interpersonal, particularly when talking about weighty matters. Friends have always valued what I offered in our discussions: impartiality, a different perspective – something more than just sympathy or advice. Combine this with my artsy leanings, my active life as a fiction writer, and the simple fact that I’ve had more than one person say “You should be a therapist”, I decided that it was something to look into.

Actually, it was something I mostly talked about, rather than looked into. It was my partner who happened upon the website of the institute that I ended up enrolling in. The more I looked into it, even though it had been a very long time since studying anything relating to psychology or psychotherapy, the more it felt right (or at least, worth the risk if it didn’t turn out to be something I liked).

And, slowly, I came to this place: a year-and-a-half later, an almost-renovated office in the basement, business cards and website in the works. I’m still enrolled in the program (halfway through my second of three years) and hope to take on clients part-time in the next month as a therapist-in-training. Of course, I’m still going to be working in film until I’ve completed the projects that I’ve started. I have no clue how the transition will go: slowly, quickly, easy, bumpy. Not sure.

That said, being a psychotherapist, I am discovering, feels natural. I have no hesitation sitting in the therapist’s chair and sharing time and space with someone who needs to talk. It is an obviously challenging career, but one that I feel better-suited to than what I am currently doing.

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Happy New Year & More…

Hello all,

Not much updating lately. There is a reason. Actually, two:

1)  I’ve signed with a literary agency who are interested in my current novel. This is great/fabulous/OMG news. However, because there are substantive revisions to be made (in order to clarify some of the details in the book and make it easier to sell to a publisher), my time is taken up with that.

2)  I am beginning my career transition, from film/TV Post Production Supervisor to Psychotherapist. I haven’t really made that public here, but it’s happening. I will begin to discuss it soon, because obviously it will need some explanation. Part of the transition has been renovating our basement to be an office – while this is a great idea (even still), it’s also been a great deal of work and stress and cost.

So, as you can see, particularly when you factor-in work-work, my plate is full. I will send updates here as they happen – or you can simply subscribe to updates. I will obviously have much to share with you about how both of these developments…um, develop.

Needless to say, it’s an exciting, somewhat scary time.

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