This post was originally sent through my author newsletter on December 2nd, 2022. To subscribe to my newsletter and receive up-to-date news, musings, and more, click HERE.
I love Thanksgiving, as a concept. I love the idea of celebrating gratitude. I even love the idea of posting things I'm grateful for, small and large, every day for the whole month of November. (That last one, I've only been able to make happen once, in 2017. I was a new mom. I had a lot of time on my hands...)
But this year, November kind of...slipped by. For starters, our whole family got a nasty respiratory virus. My daughter had it first, and then a week later I started coughing, and then a week after that, my husband decided it would be fun for him to hack up a lung as well. With all that coughing (and for my kiddo, a fever and vomiting), neither my husband nor I got a solid night's sleep for over three weeks.
Being sick and run-down, plus having a huge amount of work to do, plus getting ready for a trip (and kiddo's first time on an airplane since 2019)...let's just say I was grateful to make it to Thanksgiving Day in one piece! Never mind writing thoughtfully about gratitude.
Now here we are, a week later, and I've had a little time and space to get my thoughts together.
Since launching this newsletter, I've written a lot about the ups and downs of publishing. I've tried to be honest when things aren't going the way I'd hoped. But when I make myself sit and think about what I'm grateful for...well, there are a lot more ups than downs at the moment. Which is pretty amazing!
I released two books this year. I worked hard to promote them. They were well-received. I'm so grateful to have David Dixon and Madison Morris out in the world, for kids to read and enjoy.
I sold another book. I'm incredibly grateful for my Thirteenth Circle coauthor, MarcyKate Connolly, who makes writing about these characters and their adventures so much fun. It's a treat to get to create together.
I'm grateful for my publishing team: my agent and my various editors and illustrators and designers and everyone else responsible for turning my manuscripts into books that are sold to the masses. I'm also grateful that this year, I chose to work with a marketing consultant to take more control over promoting myself and my writing. Thanks to Dan Blank, I felt empowered to try new things, to pitch myself in ways I wouldn't have before, and to proudly share my accomplishments. Doing the things Dan urged me to do wasn't always easy. In that sense, this was a year of growth for me, and growth years are always valuable.
I'm grateful for school visits. Talking to kids is truly one of the highlights of this career. The kids I meet—my readers—inspire me and push me to keep going.
I'm grateful that, despite my dire predictions a few weeks ago, Madison Morris is NOT a Mouse! got put on a "Best of 2022" list! Huge thanks to Melissa Taylor at Imagination Soup for naming Madison one of her favorite chapter books of the year.
I'm grateful—so grateful—for the words themselves. For the act of writing. Most of the fiction I worked on this year, from The Thirteenth Circle to my unsold magical middle-grade book to the write-for-hire project I auditioned for in October, was a joy to write. That is not always the case! It's a gift when the writing is fun and fulfilling.
I could keep going. There's so much more gratitude to go around, if you take the time to meditate on it.
(And it should go without saying that I am the absolute most grateful for my husband and child. They are my everything.)
So why write it all out? Those ups and downs I mentioned earlier—the downs feel a lot less, well, down when I take time to remember the ups. "Have an attitude of gratitude" may be a Home Goods throw-pillow cliché, but I've found that it feels a whole lot better to be grateful for the good than to wallow in the bad. And yeah, I did some wallowing this year. Of course I did. But I don't want to end the year that way. I want to end the year feeling grateful.
What are you grateful for in your professional or personal life this year?
~Kathryn
What I'm:
Reading: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin was so very good!
Watching: I did it—I watched the Lindsay Lohan Christmas movie on Netflix. Falling for Christmas is exactly what you'd expect from a holiday rom-com about a hotel heiress getting amnesia and recuperating in a small-town bed-and-breakfast, where she starts to get a crush on the owner (a cute, kind widower, obviously). If you're a fan of the Hallmark Christmas genre, you'll most likely enjoy this. ;)
Listening to: We've put up our Christmas tree, which means I can start listening to Christmas music! Do you have a favorite Christmas Pandora or Spotify station?
Eating: I got my husband a six-pack of Jeni's ice cream pints for his birthday in mid-November. My favorite flavor of the bunch: High-Five Candy Bar (peanut butter, chocolate, pretzels). It was obscenely delicious.
Loving: This tree, which my daughter named "Buttercup."
