Grounding Friendships, Public Speaking Anxieties and a Short Story Collection Debut — Writer Diary
Z. Hanna is a writer from Washington, DC. They have a BA from Middlebury College and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Their short fiction has appeared in Guernica, The Breakwater Review, Every Day Fiction, and more. Their debut short story collection, We’re Gonna Get Through This Together, was published by Modern Artist Press on March 4th.
This diary captures the whirlwind of Z. Hanna’s book launch week—balancing the excitement of a debut with the anxieties of public speaking, grappling with the vulnerability of being seen, and reflecting on the years of work leading up to this milestone.
Sunday, March 2
9:00 AM – Wake up. Play with my cat for twenty minutes (a necessary de-zoomy-ing daily ritual for a high-energy street tabby who now lives in a 600-square-foot space). Eat breakfast.
10:00 AM – Go through a backlog of emails and texts, including responding to a writer friend about what book I want to recommend for a Substack post she is writing about my short story collection. Her Substack is called Purse Book and features delightful reviews of purse-sized books (my 150-page book qualifies). I settle on Cecilia by K-Ming Chang, which I read recently and loved. I decide it’s okay to mention that part of the reason I loved it was because of all the strange and erotic references to pee.
12:30 PM – Go for a long walk in Rock Creek Park, one of my favorite places in DC. Try to be present with the beauty of nature but mostly ruminate on what the book launch on Tuesday will be like—if I will successfully convince people that I am a Very Confident Public Speaker and not a pile of nerves and skin.
2:00 PM – Meet up with a group of people in my apartment building and walk to a community organizing meeting in our neighborhood. At our first meeting, there were 10 people, and here at our third, there are 100 (!). The group is part of a city-wide effort to push for DC statehood in this horrifying political moment while also figuring out how to show up for the countless protests in our city and engage in various non-compliance efforts. After three and a half hours in an overly stuffy room, I leave feeling exhausted, inspired, and also somewhat sheepish about the mini rousing speech I gave at the end about the power of collectivism. Walk home with my friend who led the meeting. Gossip a little bit, breathe, cry.
7:00 PM – Eat dinner. Do a samurai sudoku (a go-to calming strategy for me when wound up about organizing strategies, upcoming book releases, etc.).
8:30 PM – Have a long call with my partner, who lives in Vermont. This is also a helpful calming strategy.
11:30 PM – Bed.
Monday, March 3
8:30 AM – Wake up. Play with cat. Eat breakfast (an egg sandwich that I decide to put olives on—it weirdly works?).
10:00 AM – Start work. I work for a company similar to SparkNotes, and this week I am covering a Ray Bradbury story about two children who murder their parents by siccing a pair of virtual reality lions on them. My favorite character is the psychoanalyst the parents (pre-death) call in for a consult on what’s wrong with their VR-addicted kids, as his not-so-subtle monologue about the dangers of technology makes Bradbury’s intentions with the story quite clear.
4:30 PM – Look through the questions that the author Zak Salih (who I will be in conversation with at my book launch tomorrow) emailed me. They are very thoughtful and smart questions that he put together after we had coffee last week, and I find myself a little less anxious knowing what sorts of Qs will be coming my way. I take some notes on what I might say.
7:00 PM – My best friend comes over for our weekly dinner date. They kindly (so kindly) agree to run through the entire book event with me. I read for 15 minutes from my story about the psychedelic retreat for climate activists, then we sit on my barstools and they pose Zak’s questions to me while I do my best to answer in funny, charming, earnest, and insightful ways. I get a bit grumpy when I am somehow unable to meet these self-imposed standards. Best friend loves me anyway. This helps.
11:00 PM – Bed.
Tuesday, March 4
8:00 AM – Wake up. Play with cat. Eat breakfast.
9:00 AM – Keep working on Bradbury story. Lots of literary devices in this baby, including a haunting description of the murderous children’s eyes looking “like bright blue agate marbles.”
12:15 PM – Time for therapy! Thank god. Much to discuss re: impending debut book launch, how people will feel about my sometimes kinda edgy stories, if they will understand that I love being part of leftist work even as I also like to satirize it sometimes, if I will die from the utter agony of being seen. We resolve all of this neatly in one hour’s time.
1:30 PM – Lunch.
2:00 PM – Work. Panic. Work. Panic. (You get it.)
6:00 PM – Best friend comes over with a delicious meal they made for us (miso tofu, homemade pickles, and some cabbage on top of rice). They do their best to calm me down. Cat hisses and runs at them in an unusual way. We decide she is channeling the anxious energy in the room, not actually trying to hunt and kill them à la Bradbury’s beasts.
7:00 PM – Book launch!! I don’t die, phew. Over fifty people show up to my neighborhood bookstore, despite not really knowing what this book is about (this being a launch and all). Zak is an incredible interviewer. The audience asks excellent questions. I talk about why I love satire, how important it feels to me to say the things you’re not supposed to say, how I try to do this from a place of love rather than cruelty or spite. People wait in line after so I can sign their books. My publisher brings a beautiful six-layer rainbow cake with an image of the book cover on top. Friends bring me flowers. I feel very celebrated and loved.
9:00 PM – Walk home with friends, debriefing the event. Everyone says such kind things. While the title of my book—We’re Gonna Get Through This Together—is somewhat ironic (given the ways that many of the characters have very much not internalized this lesson), it also feels true in this moment. My book did not come out of nowhere. It could only exist because of the people who love me—love being a fuel for most of the hardest things. (This would not be a real diary if there weren’t some earnest reflections on love!!)
10:00 PM – Text my partner and long-distance loved ones with an update (“It’s done! I did it!”). Early bedtime. Konk out.
Wednesday, March 5
8:00 AM – Wake up. Play with cat. Read through so many supportive emails and texts that have come in about people receiving my book, reading it, enjoying it. Feel happy and also a bit anxious (again, not an easy thing to be seen!!).
9:00 AM – More quality time with Bradbury for the day. Sneak in little happy sighs about this milestone I have reached. I worked on this book for six years, and now it is out!
4:00 PM – Clean my apartment that, over the course of the past few stressful days, has become, well, pretty disgusting. Answer some book-related emails. Walk in Rock Creek.
6:00 PM – Have a long video call with my partner debriefing the event and talking through logistics for my visit to VT to see them this weekend. I remain concerned about the fact that the new cabin they live in does not have an indoor toilet. They (a native Vermonter used to such things) assure me that I will be fine.
11:00 PM – Bed.
Thursday, March 6
8:00 AM – Wake up. Play with my cat. See that an interview I did for Daniel Docs—a writer friend’s Substack—came out. A few weeks ago, Daniel sent me a Google Doc and I had 24 hours (ish) to respond to interview Qs and also make suggested changes to his musings on my book. A very fun format. The photo I sent for that one is me with my cat—was this the right choice? Ruminate on this for a while.
9:00 AM – Analyze a new Bradbury short story for work today. Instead of being a sordid tale about children killing their parents, this one is about the end of the world—yay! A bit dark, but there is a lot of lightheartedness amidst the despair.
1:00 PM – Take a lunchtime walk through Rock Creek. Notice the first daffodils of the season! Well, daffodil stems. But, still—spring is officially near. I am excited but also a bit sad. My screen name as a teen was Snowluver26, after all. I am very glad to be heading to Vermont tomorrow for a final winter fling.
3:30 PM – Head to the assisted living facility where I spend time with an octogenarian woman with dementia every Thursday afternoon. Water the plants, do the dishes, and, after much Googling, help her change the settings on her hearing aids so that they are only connected to her phone for some things and not others. Look around for any sticky notes with my name on them to see if there are tasks she wrote down for me earlier in the week and forgot about. Found one! She has been having trouble with her Zoom audio. Fix that up and then head back home.
6:00 PM – Answer emails. Pack for trip. Cook some food. Balk when my partner sends me a meme about how Enneagram Type 1s (that’s me) are like ants and Enneagram Type 2s (that’s them) are like golden retrievers. Text them that I am more than a speck-sized menial laborer serving a queen (in a colony, no less!). They respond that being an ant is obviously more queer than being a normie golden retriever, which helps.
8:30 PM – Walk the two blocks over to best friend’s apartment to watch the finale of The Traitors with them and another of my close friends in the neighborhood (really living the queer communal dream here). We FaceTime another Traitors-loving friend who lives on the other side of the city so we can all watch together. The episode is both horrible and delightful, as most reality TV is. Much sighing, exclaiming, hating on the men, rooting for the gays.
12:00 AM – Bed.
Friday, March 7
7:30 AM – Wake up. Play with cat. Tell her about how I will be gone for “three darks” (something a pet psychic once told me to do when taking a trip—a story for another time).
8:15 AM – Head to airport. Listen to the new Ologies podcast episode about "Reality TV Sociology" on the plane. Why do I love The Traitors so much? Perhaps Dr. Danielle Lindemann can tell me. Unfortunately, I keep dozing off, so all I really take in are the words “social construct” and “unionization efforts.”
12:00 PM – Land in Burlington. My partner picks me up and reveals that their pup (who is lounging in the back of the car) has, just this morning, eaten all of the poop out of the outdoor composting toilet, and we must be vigilant about monitoring her for signs of potential vomiting. Vacation is off to a great start!
1:30 PM – Arrive at partner’s little cabin in central VT. They get a fire going in the wood-burning stove. It starts to snow, forming a fluffy layer on top of the nearby pond. We talk. We nap. We eat lentil soup. The dog doesn’t throw up weeks' worth of shit. It is a good day.
10:00 PM – Bed.
Saturday, March 8
8:00 AM – Partner and I are supposed to take our three-year-old goddaughter (who lives nearby) to ballet class this morning, but I wake up feeling like I need a day to collapse. Partner decides they will do ballet time solo and starts a fire for me before they leave.
10:00 AM – Wake up attempt #2. Eat breakfast. Take a long bath. Do some stretching by the fire while listening to comedy podcasts.
1:00 PM – Partner returns with their best friend and some pizza, and we all eat together by the fire. Best friend tells me all about her part-scripted, part-improvised one-woman show, and we discuss the difference between making art from a place of self-imposed rules (must be this long, cover these themes, etc.) vs. making art from a place of surrender. I think about how, in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders talks about the importance of writers surprising themselves in their work—that readers can feel the difference between an overly plotted surprise and a real one. I have only ever done this with short fiction and wonder how one can sustain surprise while writing a novel (something I am just dipping my toes into).
5:00 PM – Partner and I watch My Old Ass, a movie I have been trying to get them to watch for months now. They love the scene where the queer teen girl protagonist, while on a mushroom trip, becomes Justin Bieber and serenades her crush, as I knew they would.
8:00 PM – Early bedtime. Vacation is the best.
