It’s a new year, we did it, we made it. Some of us whole and some of us in pieces. I think I classify as the latter, I wasn’t really whole in 2023 to begin with. 2023 was a hard year for me, one of my hardest to date. I know that itself is not a unique situation because the year was hard for so many people that I love and care about and so many people that I just know situationally. Last year I published a book. A book that I am so proud of and that I love so much. My book didn’t reach a lot of people and it didn’t find a lot of readers, and I am still trying to come to terms with that. However, I had the best editing experience of my career thus far with my editor Nick and I absolutely love my publisher Levine Quierdo and it would be a dream to work with them again someday I hope I get to.
The truth is I’ve been struggling to write my next thing, my next book. I think it’s really interesting because I have all of these ideas but the second I sit in front of my computer to write nothing feels right. When I can get words on the page, they feel disconnected from me, and I am the type of writer/creator that needs the spark in order to keep going. My spark has been missing for quite some time. I find that life is in the way. The stress and burden of financial worry, The ebb and flow of my mental health, The burnout and need for a break without the true ability to do so it’s all contributing to my current inability to write something that feels like the writer and the person I’ve come to know.
I am depressed, and I am working to feel better. The people in my close friends list on Instagram already know this to be true. My best friends and our long conversations via voice note or text message or phone call already know what steps I’m taking, what tears I’ve cried, what I’m clawing my way toward and how hard it has been to try to give myself grace. I want this space to be a space where I can just exist whatever that looks like. I want this space to be whatever it ends up being without parameter, without fear, without pretense, and without shame.
I think, through no fault of their own, people look at authors with multiple books and think oh they’ve got it made, they must be swimming in insert great thing. The truth is, I’m barely keeping my head above water, and I’m not the author, whose books end up on lists, and I try to remember that they hold value regardless, but it is not easy. I want to be an author that people universally love and read and support. I want to show up to a book festival and have a long signing line and people coming up to me crying because the words I wrote on the page meant something to them, the way that some of my brilliant, talented, wonderful friends, get to experience. Make no mistake, my glasses might be a little Rosy, but I do understand how hard it is to be that for someone. I know my friends whose books do well have a lot on their plate and have a lot to shoulder in those moments despite how grateful and touched and elated they are. Still, I do want a little piece of that pie. What I often remind myself is the books that I have written have met something to me, and that has to be enough. I need it to be enough because otherwise i’ll forget who I’m really doing this for. I am doing it for the eight year old Keah, who long dreamed of seeing her name on a book spine, who said she wanted to make people feel the way that books made her feel. I know that she would be proud of me, even when I’m not. I think she has to be proud enough for the both of us while we work through this.
Financially, I have a deadline of when I need to have a new book written and hopefully sold. In my wildest dreams, though, I could take a year to live my life, a year to dream, to grow, to make mistakes, to grieve, to heal, to exist, to create for the sake of creating not for money. Until then I think that that’s what this place will be.. A place that is just for me.
I hope you stick around to see what we get up to.
Happy new year!
Xo,
KB
Songs, I am currently obsessed with: chemistry by Kelly Clarkson, cindy lou who by Sabrina Carpenter, the grudge, and making the bed by Olivia Rodrigo, Astronaut by Griff, as always, gardenia by Mandy Moore, messy, bigger man, reasons by Savana Santos.