Thoughts on failure

I’m doing a bookish event today 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

A moment for self-promo, if you’ll allow me it!

This afternoon at 3 p.m. ET, I’ll be moderating a bookish event at The Center, which is an LGBTQ community center in Manhattan. If you’re in NYC and find yourself free, I’d love to see you stop by! If you’re NOT in the city but are still free at that time, you can catch the livestream on YouTube. I’m really and truly so stoked for this event. I love chatting with authors, and I hope to have more events like this in the future!

This past week was slightly less eventful than the one before it, but I did get to go to a book launch and also met up with some fun queer folks at a gay bar, which was genuinely so delightful.

I’m always on the hunt for more IRL friends in NYC. So, like…there’s that! ;)

From the heart 💗

If you’ve spoken to me in the past 48 hours, this should come as no surprise, but lately, I’ve been feeling like a failure. Can I be candid here?1 In the perceived safety of this newsletter space, let me share with you how I’ve failed lately:

• I haven’t sold the book that got me my agent

• I have returned to the apps in order to endlessly swipe right and be swiped left upon

• I haven’t published a freelance piece / gotten a freelance editing gig in months

It seems like every aspect of my life is one giant, screaming failure after another. And that gets to me. This Friday, I literally crawled into bed at 7:30 pm and did not crawl out again until nearly 9 am on Saturday, too depressed to even think about plugging in my phone or, like, taking off my glasses.

And I’m writing about it here. And I hate that, I do, because at the same time as I am overwhelmed by how much I’m a failure, I also know how lucky I am. Lucky to have the friends I do, who will support and listen to me as I whine ad nauseum. Lucky to have a roof over my head, a job that helps pay the bills, and food on my table. Lucky in ways that astonish me, yet still I can barely scrape together the energy to get out of bed most days.

I feel lost. I was texting a friend recently and described it as being lost in a cave, and I’ve been down here for what feels like an eternity. For a long, long time, I carried on because there was a pinprick of light that I could see. I couldn’t see how far it was or whether it was possible to excavate it further, but I knew it was there, and I moved endlessly toward it, dreaming of the day I’d reach the source and fight my way to the surface again.

Now, that pinprick of light is gone.

It’s scary, wading through the dark. There have been moments lately where I’ve experienced really strong suicidal ideation, even though the absolute last thing I want is to die. But I’ve spent years forging neural pathways from “mild distress” straight to “death is the only option,” and undoing them has proven exceedingly difficult. It’s a daily grind, one that I’m continuing to work on, but a struggle nonetheless.

Occasionally, I’m able to forget my failures — I go to a book event, I talk to a friend, I have a good writing session — but the truth is, this darkness hovers over me at least 90% of the time. I feel constricted and smothered by it.

Writing about it is helpful, but a double-edged sword: as I reread the words above, I feel overwhelmed by the sense of how pathetic I am. If you were a better writer, my intrusive thoughts whisper, this wouldn’t be an issue to begin with. If you were a better employee, a more beautiful woman, a more reliable freelancer, none of this would be happening.

I look around at my failures and I am overcome with how they are all my fault. I am so aware of my own shortcomings, pressing on the awareness of them like a bruise, ensuring I can never forget or move on from past mistakes.

Where is this going? I don’t know. I haven’t found the light yet. I am still bumping around in the darkness, hoping — somehow believing — that that pinprick of light will return. That’s all I’ve got the capability for today.

UPDATE, later that day: I just read chapter two of Charlie Jane Anders’ Never Say You Can’t Survive2, which is about impostor syndrome and felt perfect for today. So, in the spirit of that chapter, I’m going to commit to rethinking what “success” looks like, so that I can rethink what “failure” looks like as well. I don’t have the answers right now, just wanted to let y’all know that I’m ~thinking about it~.

From the camera roll 📸

From the page ✍️

Who wants an update on my WIP? Hopefully all of you, because that’s all I have the brainspace for today, lol.

I’m racing through the midpoint of this book, and that means that my main characters, two consenting adults, have taken their relationship to “the next level” — that’s right, they had sex.

And I wrote about it.

Which was a first for me! Diving into adult romance has been a fun experience of stretching my creativity and exercising writing muscles I haven’t had much practice with before.

From the shelf 📚

Last week I finished I Will Never Leave You, Kara Kennedy’s incredible debut YA. IWNLY3 is a thrilling ghost tale in which Maya’s ex-girlfriend Alana comes back to haunt her with a chilling message: help Alana possess someone, or go down for her murder.

The prose in this book absolutely sings off the page; there were so many moments I wanted to underline to come back to because I just loved the turn of phrase or the images evoked through Kara’s language. Maya is a character who resonated with me deeply — I wanted to fight for her (and sometimes to fight her brain, lol), and I would have strangled ghost-Alana if I could have! I highly recommend this gorgeous debut. And if you’re interested in learning more — about Kara, about IWNLY, and why ghost stories matter, check out my Q&A with the author!

Alla prossima 👋

In Gaza, Palestinians are still under fire from Israel with the full support of the US. Hopefully, we can spend some time this week urging our lawmakers to enact an arms embargo. We’re racing toward the 12-month mark of this latest onslaught, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives lost.

And while we’re here; JD Vance and his lies about Haitian immigrants can get fucked. There’s nothing funny about the fires of racism he is stoking. It’s actually very disgusting.

That’s all from me this week.

— Karis xoxo