On ambition

Hello from the long weekend 🍃

About a month and a half ago, I decided to book some PTO for this weekend. I could feel my mental health sort of teetering on the edge of a cliff, and I thought, well, won’t it be good to have some time off to look forward to? And then like two days later, the hospital happened and life became wild and then I woke up at the start of last week and was like…oh yes. I have a five-day weekend. And it was delightful!

So I’m spending this long weekend reading, revising HEX, doing some email admin, hanging out with friends (today Jené and I are going out for HIGH TEA so that’s absolutely delightful!) and in general enjoying the time off. What have y’all been up to this weekend? What is refilling your well and bringing you joy?

From the heart 💗

I am convinced most of the time that my dreams won’t come true because they’re too big.

I’ve always had a more-than-healthy serving of ambition. In 9th grade, we memorized the “Friends, Romans, countryment” speech from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and the lines that always stuck out to me the most were, “The noble Brutus / Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: / If it were so, it was a grievous fault, / And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.” I remember feeling deeply offended by the idea that ambition was a fault, worthy of death.

That ambition has followed me through most of my life. It’s what led me to apply to summer internships at outlets like the New York Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution without a single internship credit to my name. It’s what led me to apply to j-schools like Columbia and NYU immediately after undergrad. It’s what led to me moving to New York. And, ultimately, it’s what led to me spending more than eight years doggedly pursuing the next step on the road to publication, writing novels, querying them, shelving them and trying again.

My ambitious swings haven’t always paid off: I never did get that fancy internship I craved, for example. But it has propelled me forward in so many situations when maybe it would have been smarter, or at least easier, to turn around.

To an extent, it’s that ambition that guided me in March 2018, nearly exactly six years ago. With $150 to my name, I hopped in my car and road tripped from South Carolina to New York City. By the time I reached the Brooklyn apartment my friend was letting me crash in for the weekend, I had blown through half of it just on tolls.

The next week was fraught: I had a job interview on Tuesday, nowhere to stay past Monday, and I spent my last dollars on Monday evening.

Yet something kept me going. For that week, for the following six months before I found a permanent home, and for the five and a half years since then I have persisted in my dream of living in NYC and publishing books because of this deep-seated ambition, this drive to follow my dreams.

My dreams are big. My dreams involve big book deals, bestseller lists, award recognition, billboards in Times Square, movie adaptations, name recognition across the world. They expand to reach international book tours and fanart from all the corners of the universe. I want to leave an indelible mark on the world, shake it so much so that everyone knows that things are different because I once walked this earth and breathed this air.

And because my dreams are so big, I worry. I worry that I’m not talented enough to warrant the size of my dreams. Who am I, after all, to think I could have a Judy Blume-sized impact on kidlit? Who am I to believe I could emulate Jenny Han or Leigh Bardugo. Who am I?

I’m just a girl with a wealth of ambition, a lot of drive, and hopefully the luck to make it all spark together some day.

Also, fine, I think I have talent and skill when it comes to writing. I hate saying that, that admission feels like the height of hubris, but this is my newsletter and I want to be real here and it would be disingenuous to pretend I don’t think, on some level, that I deserve to have my dreams come true1.

Someday maybe I will come around to being okay making my dreams smaller, but that’s not the point of this letter today. No, today’s letter is to say: if you, too, have big dreams and terrifying ambition? Fucking go for it, man. Take the ill-advised road trip to the city of your dreams. Write the book that scares you. Write the next one, and the next one. Audition for the role you want. Apply to the dream school you think might be out of your league. Reach out to the connection on LinkedIn to ask for an information interview so you can change your career path at 30, at 40, at 50.

Do the big thing, the scary thing, the thing that you think is a little foolish and a lot impractical. Believe in yourself.

Believe in yourself.

From the camera roll 📸

From the page ✍️

I’m deep in the revision process for HEX, my f/f witchy romcom set during a New York fall. I’m trying something new with this revision. A while ago, I read a newsletter from in which she mentioned using notebooks as part of her writing process. I was so inspired, that I immediately bought two pretty spiral-bound notebooks from Papier, one that’s orange and fall-like for HEX and one that’s green and spring-like for my middle grade, KITTY.

When they arrived, I had the intention of using them to journal about my writing process. I wasn’t going to actually use them to write, or plot anything, or revise, are you kidding me? Ha! I’m not a longhand girlie!!!

Turns out I’m a longhand girlie.

I’ve been using the HEX notebook in conjunction with the printed and spiral-bound manuscript I have. I underline or otherwise mark a section in the manuscript, and then in the notebook I write down how I’m going to edit that section. This can range from a one-line note, like, “Add some emotion here,” to a whole paragraph in which I actually rewrite the scene.

It’s been really quite eye-opening to change this process! It feels more intentional, more stable even, to have everything written out in a notebook. I’m actually taking the time to think through plot problems as I read, rather than just making a note that says, “fix this!” and then deciding when I’m working in the doc that it’s a problem for the next round of revisions, or not a problem at all, actually.

I have so many big feelings about this book, and this revision of it in particular. It’s the third draft, and I think I’m finally crystallizing some of the themes of the story, some of the big-picture questions I’m asking and seeking to answer.

Over the past two years as I pursued my MFA, I often wondered what I was learning. I couldn’t pinpoint the craft areas where I was improving. I knew I was becoming a better reader, and a better literary citizen, but it took me a while to realize how I was becoming a better writer.

With this revision, it’s becoming clear. I’m honing in on specific craft elements and areas that I can fix — I’m asking myself questions like why do Jade and Bea fall for each other? and what is keeping them apart? and how can I make this more tense, more of a question mark for readers? 

Some of that comes from conversations with my advisors about my writing — I remember specific tips and tricks they parceled out to me, or questions they asked about my writing that I’m trying to answer — and some of it comes from having spent two years intently reading over 150 books and analyzing their craft.

Back to HEX. I’m about halfway through this read-through, and I’m getting so excited to wrap up and dive into the document and start implementing these changes. I’m so excited about this book! I think it’s asking big questions and I think it’s pretty swoony and I hope someday you’ll have the chance to read it and tell me whether or not you agree with that. Also — I think it’s very funny! I do love some laughs 😂

Alla prossima 👋

I wish the genocide in Palestine were over, but it continues on. Biden has announced he’s building a pier to get aid into Gaza, which is so ridiculous cause like Joseph, sweetheart, stop sending the money and the weapons and maybe the genocide will end. I don’t have enough words today to contain the breadth and depth of my disgust and horror. I’m going to send some emails to people in power, though.

That’s all I have for you. Love,— Karis xoxo