Am I enough?

It’s getting chilly in New York 🥶

I went up to the Bronx on Friday to hang out with a friend and I bundled up in my big winter coat and walked outside and the air was sharp and there was a bite to the cold and my god, it was amazing! I love winter! The only downside is when my apartment gets cold, but other than that I simply adore the cold weather, the crispness to the air, the way when a big gust of wind comes it takes my breath away…obsessed.

Hey friends! We’re heading toward the end of 2024 and I’ve got a silly-goose dream of getting a few additional subscribers to this newsletter before 2025! I’m planning to do a giveaway for new & existing subscribers. It’ll be to win either a 10-page critique or a 30-minute AMA with me, winner’s choice! All you’ve gotta do to enter is be subscribed to this newsletter, so tell your friends, tell your enemies, get people to subscribe!

Also — if you haven’t seen on my socials yet, this week I put together a resource document for writers at all stages. There’s links and tips for writing and revising, querying, pursuing MFAs in kidlit, publishing nonfiction online, and more! Would love it if you took a look, and if you like what you see and felt inclined to share with your friends, that’d be great, too :)

From the heart 💗

On not feeling like I’m *enough*

Today I’m feeling like expanding on a post I made on Instagram about two months ago, in early October. I talked about how I’ve always calculated my life’s worth in terms of quantity of success, of lives reached, of people who would mourn when I die, of obituaries in national publications1.

I’ve spent years chasing the dream of publishing books not only because I want to share my stories with the world while I live, but because I want to secure my legacy for after I die.

This post is from October 4th, but just this week in therapy I was crying because I feel like I’m running out of time. I’m overwhelmed by everything on my plate at the moment, and my therapist was encouraging me to take breaks, to enjoy life — leave the house sometimes, even if it means being less productive in a day’s accountings. But I worry that if I spend too much time enjoying life, I’ll spend less time producing a legacy.

Woof.

You know the famous line from Hamilton?2 The one where they ask him “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?”

I remember the first time I heard that line, how I jolted in place, like I’d just been touched with a live wire. Not because anyone has ever asked it of me; but because I relate so hard to the feeling that I’m running out of time. That life is screaming by me and I’m wasting it, twiddling my thumbs, letting my future come and pass without doing anything about it.

Two weeks from today I will hit a wild milestone — the 10-year anniversary of the first queries I ever sent out. And I will do so without any published books to my name, without a book deal inked and signed, without even a new book polished and ready to go on sub in the new year. I have signed with an agent — it took eight and a half long year, and it was glorious when it happened — but since then the theme of my publishing journey has held: it is a long slog. It is hard work. It is agonizing waiting.

And through it all, I have convinced myself that my worth meter hasn’t even started ticking. That the clock on my contributions to the world is stalled. That I’ve done nothing. That I’ve achieved nothing. That I’m worth nothing.

This is a daily struggle. Literally every day I fight myself on this, convincing myself that I’m worthless and that if I died it would barely make a ripple in the ocean of life.

And when I told my therapist this, she looked at me and said, “I would care.” That if I died, she would mourn. That if I were gone, it would impact her life.

I believed her. And as I believed her, she pointed out that other people would care, too.

Maybe I’m not the member of the bookish community with the most followers; maybe I’m not the most popular girl in school; maybe my words and actions in this community don’t inspire a tidal wave of action and reaction.

But I’m making a ripple, a whirlpool, a small wave. I’m making an impact in my own small way. I am creating — words, stories, communities, resources — and I am giving to others when I can, and when I cannot, at least I can offer a smile and a word of support.

I think I’ll continue to struggle with the feeling like I haven’t accomplished enough. I have been blessed-cursed with great ambition and the desire to be stratospheric. It has pushed me to do wild things, to aim for the heavens and sometimes make it in. It has also led to deep disappointment when I haven’t been accepted everywhere I want to be. I cannot be mad about my ambition. But I can learn to temper it. To look aat what I have done — eight books written, an agent, two mentorship opportunities to give back, an MFA, friends across the world — and say, “This is good.”

Who knows if I’ll ever achieve what I want. I’m going to keep striving for it. But in the meantime, I’m going to be grateful for the ones who love me and hold me and see me and read my words and support me even if I worry their investment in me isn’t going to pay off. Because I’m not a start-up, I’m a person, and I don’t need to be profitable to have lived a life worth something.

From the camera roll 📸

A sleeping Lizzie

From the page ✍️

On the long journey to my next project

I wanted to have a book ready to go on sub by, at the latest, this past October. I thought it would be HEX, the sapphic YA witchy romance I worked on as my creative thesis from VCFA and spent the first five months of this year revising.

When I sent it off to my agent in early May, it was with the confidence of someone who had devoted nearly nine months to writing, revising, incorporating beta feedback, and in general polishing up a manuscript. I was pretty sure I’d get an email back shortly with the message that it was the most perfect book he’d ever seen, and it was so ready to go out on sub, and it would probably sell in a heartbeat, at auction, for high six figures.

Lol.

Instead, my agent pointed out that the voice was reading younger than I’d intended. I spent about a month rewriting the first 50 pages after tweaking the plot to fit with the characters’ new, rounded down age to make it fit in the midde grade category3.

And then I realized something kind of crucial — I didn’t want to write HEX as a middle grade. I preferred the characters as 16-year-olds. It made more sense to me that way. At the same time, the thought of starting the draft over again made me feel like I was going to boil over. It had been 10 months of this project being my main one. I was honestly a little burnt out on it4.

Long story short — I took July off of writing, and in August and September I drafted a 60,000-word first draft of an adult romance, which I’m now revising.

At various points over the past year, I’ve made grossly overly ambitious statements like, “I’m going to finish (this draft of) both REVENGE and HEX by the end of 2024,” which was honesstly way too ambitious of me, lol.

The point is — it’s been really hard to get a project into good shape over the past year and a half. I’ve spent a lot of time feeling like I’m failing. I’ve done so much just in 2024 — drafted 75,000 new words, completed two and a half revisions, written and workshopped a few short stories, published some nonfiction — and yet I feel like I have nothing to show for myself.

Because I don’t have a book ready to go on sub. Because those 75,000 words aren’t ready. Aren’t going anywhere. Aren’t perfect.

I’m fighting the feeling that I’ve wasted time. I know that no writing time is ever truly wasted, and I know I learned from every single drafted word this year as well as from the revisions.

But man. It kind of sucks to have gone through a whole year and not have something tangible to present at the end of it.

I guess the theme of today is that I have to get used to the intangibles. It’s hard, but I’m doing my best. And I’m gonna keep revising REVENGE and hope that soon, it’ll be ready.

From the shelf 📚

The Shades of Magic5 trilogy, by V.E. Schwab

It’s been almost exactly a year since I started A Darker Shade of Magic, the first book in V.E. Shwab’s Shades of Magic trilogy, and about a month since I finished A Conjuring of Light, the stunning finale, and my brain still sometimes rings with the voices of Kell, Lila, Rhy, and the rest of the crew.

I originally attempted to read these books in like 2016 and I didn’t love the first one, so I quit maybe a chapter in. Idk what was wrong with 2016 me, because 2023/2024 me LOVED this series. It was a slow burn for sure, the first two books kind of starting in a somewhat meandering way, just enjoying ourselves in this new world. By the climax of book two and for all of book three, I was on the edge of my seat.

The characters came to life, the world was dangerous and exciting, and I just really loved this series! I highly recommend it, and I can’t wait to continue on with The Fragile Threads of Power soon!

Alla prossima 👋

Gosh, the world has been rocky this week. Something big that happened — Amnesty International concluded that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. That is not news to most of us, but it is just another authoritative voice calling out what we’re seeing for what it is.

Let’s do good this week.

— Karis xoxo