A bitch was born!!!!

Hello my loves 🎂 

I turned 32 yesterday and my day was spectacular. I had brunch with a friend, a park photo shoot to show off my cute new outfit, a ceramics class I was so bad at lmao, that is nOT my calling, a dinner and drinks with friends, and then more drinks at a bar. I got deliciously tipsy-maybe-drunk and laughed and felt like my head was floating on the clouds, and I felt — I felt like things would be okay. What a gift, what a gift 💝.

Let me safeguard this energy and joy and carry it with me through this year.

From the heart 💗

I graduated college 10 years ago this weekend

Yes, it’s been a wild weekend. My 10-year college graduateaversary, my 32nd birthday, and Mother’s Day all at the same time!! This is my life.

When I graduated college I was 21; for some reason, it meant a lot to me to be able to say that, that I had graduated as a 21-year-old. Granted, I turned 22 the next day, but hey! I’m a fuckin prodigy!

That’s a joke but it’s also the deep deep truth of what I have always wanted, what my heart has always longed for and craved — exceptionality. I wanted to be the best, the creme de la creme, the brightest at the youngest age. I learned about Mozart and went “damn it I want to be that!” I learned the word “mediocre” in my youth and immediately decided that was the worst thing I could be.

Because even if you’re not good at something, if you can be the best at being bad at it…yes I know I sound like Monica Geller SHE HAD A POINT ABOUT SOME THINGS OKAY!

So yeah, I really wanted to be 21 when I graduated college. Because 22 is the average or whatever, and that meant I was…above average.

Listen. I’m not saying I make sense. I’m just saying I want to be the best.

In the 10 years since graduation, I have…not been the best. In fact, I often feel that I have failed at everything I wanted on that sunny Kentucky day 10 years ago.

I thought this weekend was going to be tinged with melancholy and despair as I face the fact that, a full decade after finishing undergrad, I have accomplished so few of the things I wanted back then.

But as I sit here, I can’t help but think that I accomplished one really, truly, spectacular thing; I managed to stay alive.

It’s been a hard fucking road to do so. I have been hospitalized five times in these 10 years. I have cycled through dozens of mental healthcare providers. I have self-harmed…a lot. I’ve fantasized about dying by just about every method known to man, and come close to acting on those fantasies more times than I will count here. I thought I’d be dead by 27. But here I am. Thirty-two. Still alive.

It’s astonishing.

I’ve survived. And in some ways, I’ve thrived. I live in Brooklyn. I have a cat. I have an agent for my books. I have an MFA. I have tattoos — yes, they count, they make me feel cool and badass, okay? I get to live life on my terms. I came out of the closet and it made me feel free and unrestrained in a way I couldn’t have imagined 10 years ago. I have communities that love me, that I’ve helped to build and grow and see flourish.

Every day is a battle. I feel like shit about my job, where I’m not the kind of leader I always want to be. I feel like shit about my love life. I feel like shit about my ability to leave the house more than once every two weeks. And sometimes those feelings of shittiness overwhelm me and conspire with my wack brain chemistry to make me think I ought to die.

And yet, here I am. Celebrating my 10th college graduateaversary 🎉

I will not take this for granted.

From the question box ❓

Do you need to hire a freelance editor before querying?

Short answer: nope! You absolutely do not!

Slightly longer answer: there may be circumstances in which you do actually want to reach out to a freelance editor. If you don’t have beta readers and critique partners — or if you do but you’ve reached the end of yours & their knowledge — you might want to reach out to someone for a developmental edit.

You might not want an editor but rather a coach, someone to spitball and brainstorm ideas with.

The only thing you NEED to do before querying is write a book and revise it until you genuinely cannot make it any better on your own.

From the shelf 📚

The Message, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I read this book over the last month and wanted to share it with y’all, as I think it’s highly worth the read. It’s a slim, small nonfiction but it packs a hefty punch. Coates travels between Senegal; Columbia, SC; and Palestine, and writes about what these trips taught him about society, and racism, and writing, and ethnic cleansing. It’s a powerful book, filled with jaw-dropping messages and one that made me cry.

It made me cry because it unflinchingly looks at the reality of the racist, colonialism-tinted world we live in, and it imagines there’s a better way.

Alla prossima 👋

Oh, man. Lately I’ve barely been able to look at the world’s realities in the face, much less write about them. Much less try to take action. I have felt like I was locked in a cell in my own mind, beating against the bars of my depression, unable to see out of it. To protect myself, I put my head in the sand.

But the horrors — they persisted. Not just in the US, where arts funding is being decimated and Trump’s crony Stephen Miller is floating getting rid of the option for detained immigrants to have their day in court. There’s fear in India and Pakistan where a ceasefire was broken within hours. There’s man-made famine, ethnic cleansing, and a genocide in Palestine, where men, women, and children in Gaza are living in inhumane conditions like you wouldn’t believe. And more, maybe, that I am not alerted to.

There’s a lot I can’t do in this world, but if there’s one thing I can do, it’s use this space to advocate for what is right. For the rights of immigrants and refugees who came here seeking a better life and should 1000% not be kidnapped off the streets by masked, warrant-less ICE agents. What an inhuman society we’ve created where there is anyone who can justify those actions.

I beg you, please, if you haven’t already, to acknowledge the horrors: the genocide, the racism, the homophobia and transphobia. It is the bare minimum of all we can do.

That’s all for today, friends.

— Karis xoxo