Closing out the in-school season of my life...

Happy holiday month 🎄

It’s December! I have an advent calendar so I can nom nom on chocolate for the first 25 days of the month. The temperature is dropping, the Christmas music is bopping, and I am simply delighted that my favorite time of year is here again! What do y’all look forward to the most in December?

In today’s newsletter, here’s what you’ll find:

1. From the heart: I’m…almost done…with grad school work

2. From the camera roll: a selection of snaps from residencies past

3. From the page: what’s next for my writing

As always, do feel free to leave a lil comment or a heart or a reply email if you have anything you’d like to share!

From the heart 💗

I have been putting off writing this newsletter all day because what is there to say? How do I process the past two years? In 2021, on literally just a whim and the very last day of the deadline, I applied to the Writing for Children & Young Adults program at VCFA. Two years later, I’ve turned in my final packet and I’m wrapping up work on my creative thesis.

I’m so close to graduating, I can nearly taste it — the triumph of finally, finally, having that advanced degree I’ve wanted since undergrad. The satisfaction of having desired something, worked hard for it, and successfully closed my fingers around it. It’s so close, I can feel the vibrations of its presence within my chest.

Eight and a half years ago, I moved to New York City to pursue an MA in journalism at NYU. It had been my dream for the last two years of undergrad: move to the city, study at a prestigious school, embark on my career as a journalist.

Unfortunately, those dreams crashed and burned, in part thanks to a mental health crisis that derailed much of my work during my first semester, and in part because, well, NYU is super expensive.

I don’t regret not being a journalist, because I genuinely don’t think I’m the right person for that career, but there’s still something so festering-wound-in-my-heart about not having finished that degree.

And when I enrolled at VCFA, I did so with the belief that I wouldn’t finish. I barely believed I’d go to that first residency, if I’m being perfectly honest. Something kept pushing me, from semester to semester, though. At first, it was just my cohort; I loved them, and knew I wanted to graduate with them. Eventually, once I got closer to the end, I became driven by my own desire to finish. Not just to mark a goal off or check off a bucket list item, but because I’d put so much work into this degree and I was going to get it if it killed me!

It didn’t kill me. That’s the most surprising thing. In so many ways, enrolling at VCFA saved me. In some ways literal, such as the moments my peers held my hand through deep suicidal ideations. In some ways, the salvation was metaphorical, in that this program reignited a belief in myself.

I have been seen by my people at VCFA, as a writer and a person, and that’s so meaningful to me.

So, eight and a half years after I started one grad program, I’ll be graduating from another. That means everything to me.

From the camera roll 📸

From the page ✍️

People keep asking me “what’s next” after graduation, so I thought I’d spend some time here chatting about my ~best-laid plans~ for after Jan. 13! Here’s the thing: I should probably plan to like, take two months off and rest and relax. But I am nothing if not perennially convinced of my own ability to keep trudging onward, so that’s not what I’m gonna do! Or at least, plan to do. If I end up doing that, so be it.

The goal for December is to finish the draft of HEX, I DID IT AGAIN. That’s the project I’ve worked on this semester, my witchy f/f romance about a bisexual teenager who keeps hexing people and accidentally hexes the wrong person. It’s been a jolt of joy in my life lately, and I’m so excited to get to the end so I can yeet the draft off to one or two readers and then take January to do residency and relax.

Come February, I’d love to dive into revisions for HEX, and have a completed draft to send to my agent by March or April. And then, I’ll dive into finishing up the novel in verse that’s playing in the back of my mind.

And through all of this, I do hope to read. I haven’t quite lost the ability or desire to read, but I am excited to be able to read only what I want and on my own timeline. The hardest part of every packet period for me was honestly the bibliography; I always tried to read 10 full novels, and that’s really hard to cram into a four-week period for me. So I’m taking a step back and allowing myself to slow down and read when I want to.

I am, of course, a TBR girlie — mood readers, how do you survive? — so I’ve got like the next 20-some books to read already planned out, lol. But that’s what excites me about reading! Knowing what’s coming up next, having a plan, a roadmap…I need that.

These are my plans. Will they change? Will I throw it all out the window and vegetate for five months? Who knows! Could be! We’ll have to find out in January.

Alla prossima 👋

Friends — I love y’all. And I have a request. I have this silly pipe dream of hitting like 150 subscribers by the end of the year (I said it was silly!! And a pipe dream!!! It’s ambitious!!!) and I’m not sure how to collect more people, lol. So I thought, maybe I can solicit y’all to assist? If you like what I put out here, and you feel you can genuinely recommend it to others, would you mind doing so? I’d appreciate it so much.

While I have your attention, I want to direct it to Gaza, where bombing renewed with a terrifying, horrifying vigor this week. Genuinely I don’t know what to do about it other than to email and call my senators and reps, and be loud about it on my platforms, and that’s what I’m doing. Yesterday I read several posts from journalists in Gaza, including the linked one from Bisan, where the hopelessness and preparation for death just gutted me. The scale of death is unfathomable. It’s atrocious. It rends my soul open. At the very least, we must bear witness and acknowledge what is happening. We must do what we can to stop this atrocity. And then we must work to ensure this never happens again.

Til next week.