In which I embarrass myself

Hello from the day of triple vaccinations 💉

It’s that time of year — fresh Covid and flu vaccines are available! I’m jetting off to the pharmacy this morning to get triply vaccinated, because I have plans this fall and lots of travel and writing retreats and if I have to miss them because of illness I might just scream! They are, truly, what’s keeping me going putting one foot in front of the other every day.

I finished the second season of Only Murders in the Building on Hulu recently and dove into season 3 this week and I am already SO delighted. It’s such a silly show and none of it feels at all realistic or possible and that’s the only reason I can watch it, lol.

I’ve also been reading some delightful books — namely, I’m reading an ARC of Chloe Gong’s upcoming sequel Vilest Things which features my unproblematic faves Calla and Anton, as well as Emma Alban’s You’re the Problem, It’s You, a deliciously hot historical gay romance. They’re reminding me why I love reading and writing so much!

From the heart 💗

Ugh I’m going to talk about something that deeply, deeply embarrasses me. Something for which I feel a lot of shame and therefore don’t talk about as much as I want to. I’m going to talk about romance. Specifically, its presence or absence in my life.

Because sometimes I hate myself for being a 31-year-old woman who’s never been in a relationship, who has spent most of her life presuming her own unattractiveness and undesirability. More than sometimes, if I’m being honest: this is a daily struggle.

I wish I didn’t have this undercurrent of desire for romance that pulses through me. I wish I could look around at the wealth of platonic friendships I have — the real, true, lifelong love I have found in my friends, my roommates, my classmates — and realize that if that is the culmination of the loves of my life, that is beautiful and fulfilling and ENOUGH.

Because I am so unendingly grateful for the friendships I have. My friends have propped me up when I needed it — they’ve offered money when I was broke & unemployed, they’ve offered words of support when I was lost in the woods of self-loathing, they’ve literally kept me alive when I thought I ought to die. My friends are the most beautiful, stunning, special gift I have ever been given. I am in love with all of them, in a very platonic “you’re not allowed to ever leave my life” kind of way.

And yet. And yet, the longing for romance lingers. The fear that I won’t ever truly not be alone unless I have a partner. The desire for someone to look into my soul, see all the parts of me that I hate or am ashamed of, all the parts of me that I’m secretly delighted by — and say, “I see you. I love you for all the ugly and the beautifult hat you bring to the world. And I want to make you my priority. My ride-or-die. The love of my life.”

I crave that love.

And I cannot lie — I want to be desired, to be seen as beautiful and lovely. To be viewed through the rose-colored glasses of attraction1.

I want all the good, the bad, the messy, the delightful. I want.

And not only do I not have it, I have never had it. To my knowledge, no one has ever looked at me and felt butterflies, or stirrings of attraction, or that deep affection that comes when the person you love is being ridiculous but you are so head over heels that you can’t help but laugh at their antics. I have been on dates, but I’ve never dated. I feel like there is something wrong with me because of that. Something lacking, something about me that simply isn’t good enough.

Welp. Now that I’ve excavated all of THAT and laid it at your feet…enjoy this picture that I took at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

From the camera roll 📸

From the page ✍️

Lately I’ve been feeling my hope dwindle.

Hope is one of those ephemeral things that you desperately need in order to survive in publishing, like talent, luck, and perseverance. Hope is what fuels you to hone your talent, wait for you luck, persevere even when it feels like insanity. Hope is what has kept me going for over 10 years and seven completed novels, four of which flamed out in the query trenches. Hope has kept my dreams alive.

And it’s still there, a small flame of hope, sputtering in the wind and struggling to burst into a conflagration. It’s there, but it’s flailing.

I’m flailing.

This past week I got three passes on a few different works of fiction and I sunk into depression over them. It got really bad, to the point where I was genuinely afraid of what I would do to myself.

I was losing my hope.

Thankfully, friends & therapists & group therapy & an outing to a beautiful garden helped set my brain back on track, and now I’m here, and I’m thinking…maybe I’m not the only one who’s losing hope. Maybe I’m not the only one whose flame is getting smaller every day. So maybe it would be helpful if I offered up what I think I can — and you can — do to revive hope in publishing when it feels like despair makes more sense.

• Dive into something fresh: the thing that has kept me clinging onto this dream of publishing lately has been my WIP, the adult romance that I’m about 25,000 words into. It’s exciting, I’m having fun drafting while also already making plans for how to strengthen the book in revision, and it’s reminding me that this all started because of a love of writing.

• Let trusted peers hype you up: whether this is through a positivity pass on a short section of your writing or even just a conversation with some fellow creatives that’s aimed at reviving your flagging spirit, the key here is the trusted peers part. Talk to people you admire who know your heart and your work. People you know won’t sugarcoat things for you, but who at the same time are undoubtedly already your cheerleaders.

• Do something entirely unrelated: on Friday, I went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden with a friend. We walked around for just under an hour and talked and it reminded me that there is a point to being alive, even when publishing isn’t working out.

• Read a book you love: it can be a reread of an old fave or a new adventure you haven’t been on before, but reading a book you’re loving can remind you that you, too, have stories to share. That you, too, have a way with words and capturing scenes on the page. That you, too, are going to be on bookshelves one day.

That’s all the tips I’ve got; what do you do when you’re running out of publishing hope?

Alla prossima 👋

Well. Israel is still committing a genocide against Palestinians — now encroaching into the West Bank, which is *cough* not Hamas-run, so like…everything people have been saying since October about this genocide not being “about Hamas.”

Today I want to exhort you, if you’re reading this newsletter and you’re a writer — but especially a kidlit writer — to get in on the fight for a cessation of this horror. I’m talking ceasefire, I’m talking arms embargo so Israel literally cannot keep bombing, I’m talking dismantling the settler-colonial state brick by brick2. I’m talking land-back. I’m talking reparations because hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost in just the past 10+ months, because irreparable damage has been done to the Earth, because this is a travesty, a tragedy, an inhumane level of destruction.

Writers for kids & teens should be on the FRONT LINES of this fight for justice. Because how many kids have been killed in Gaza? How many parents, neighbors, siblings, communities have been wiped out? How can we say we write to make the world a better place for children, and then turn around and not be leading the march? It’s unconscionable.

I don’t know what my role is in this fight in addition to talking about it and trying to get people on board. I’m looking for more action items — hit me up if you have them — but for now, I exhort you to please, for the love of humanity, speak up.