"How to Move to San Francisco"

In homage, no doubt, to Lorrie Moore's famous piece, "How to Become a Writer Or, Have You Earned This Cliche?", Elissa Bassist writes "How to Move to San Francisco" over on The Rumpus.

"You come to San Francisco to be a writer, just like everyone else. You are a writer. Say this while looking in the mirror. Say this when you aren’t invited out. Say this when trying to get a job but failing miserably.

You are young. You are young and female and brand new. Not new like a baby, but new like an untested product.

On your first morning in the city that is not New York, you devise some mental to-do lists for your new life and visualize your imminent happiness because you are doing it all on your own for the first time in your life. When you go to a coffee shop, you overhear people say things like, “I wrote a short story about it.” Mock them silently while writing a short story about your last relationship that you tentatively title “Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln, How Was The Show?” Join a writers’ group and show it to them. The first piece of feedback is: “Some of your images are quite nice, but I hate the female protagonist.” Say nothing to them of your piece’s autobiographical nature. You get back to your subletted room, which is separated from your roommate’s by a glass door that allows her to hear you cry; in the privacy of your room, she talks to you through the wall as if there were no wall at all. She suggests you get a real job."

Good, good stuff.  Read the whole thing.  (Really, right now.  H/t to Keely.)