sympathy is a knife

officially announcing my BRB / Critical vs. Commercial success and what to do when you have neither

Hey gang,

I announced on Instagram last week (I’m not fact checking this—it could have been a month ago) that I have officially put my paid tier of Hello Corrello on hold “indefinitely.” But fret not as I think I’m going to have some guest essays here and there for all my annual subscription baddies <3 You all seriously rule. As I mentioned in my post on Instagram, together have donated hundreds to some amazing organizations and you have all facilitated a sense of hopefulness in any otherwise bleak time. Today’s newsletter is going to be a reflection on what I’ve written over the last year plus of doing 2 newsletters a month.

The paid tier of my Substack was born from a desire to speak candidly about the crushing realities of publishing in what was still a proto-fascist (but the signs were there) America. I also wanted to protect myself—but still yearned so, so deeply to share with you all what it felt like writing a book that no one gave a shit about.

In my first essay, I unpacked what it felt like to write a character who was sick of making fun of herself only to have that character be ridiculed. A real mind fuck. You can read that essay here, as I’ve unlocked it for September.

I’m not afraid to admit that I was hoping this essay would “mOvE tHe NeEdLe” as you freaking nerds like to say. Yes, I was hoping—once again—that my vulnerability would be enough to bring people into my world, to make them curious about my writing. I was also hoping to share with my readers, a much smaller number at that time, how much I love them and how grateful I was. I received so, so many kind comments and emails after that essay. It brought some light back into me at a really dark time.

And also, it fired me up. As authors, we’re always being pushed to find our niche. Which is a very funny, very white thing to say, btw. Because there are many, many people who were always going to be “““niche.””” There was never any other option. Black romance authors, for example, are flattened into one single category and called a niche. Asian-American authors, also. It’s not even like, Korean-American stories or Chinese-American stories. It’s fully half the global, umbrella’d under AAPI — which also sometimes pulls in Middle Eastern folks, who forever live in the grey zone of American racial politics. We’re sort of pushed towards this niche concept as if its a quasi-silver bullet, a real Solution. As if there is not something bigger, weirder, and darker going on culturally.

I started writing monthly essays about all that bigger, weirder, darker stuff. And those essays allowed me to feel a wonderful sense of control in a time when I was a cartoon character gripping onto an invisible steering wheel with my foot pressed on an invisible pedal even though my car had just been blown away by dynamite.

me

Of course, I didn’t want to seem bitter. God forbid! There are a few things we should all never be and one of them is bitter, which highlights the most unpalatable quality in a woman — thinking we deserve something.

But nevertheless, I seemed to be continuously using my monthly essay to try and renegotiate the terms on which I did this whole Writing Books Thing. I wrote a lot about the tension between art and commerce, because at that time I believed there was still a push-pull. Now, in this moment, I don’t really believe that anymore. I don’t think art is being created to challenge; I think it’s being created to comfort. And that’s kinda scary. Anyway!

For many months of this past year, I was totally and completely unable to cry. Things would happen and I would feel my eyes burn and my face fill with pressure and then nothing would happen. I joked repeatedly to my best friend: “Maybe I’ll finally cry about this!" or “Maybe I’ll cry about this tomorrow.”

But those tears never came; I grew more bitter, more withdrawn. More furious and more ambitious. I put my head down and focused on my invisible speedometer and kept cranking the invisible gas. My car had blown away months ago, btw.

I’ve been on the run from myself for a long time now. Pretty much since I turned eighteen, I have been in Achievement Mode. But this year, something inside me fractured.

Finally, this summer the tears came. It was while I was in Italy, reconnecting with friends in a deeper, more emotional way for the first time in years. I’m ashamed to admit that I think for most of my adult life, I took friendship for granted. Maybe it was just that, at 25, the portion of your life you’ve been conscious for is still so small, it doesn’t hit you how important people who have known you since you were 5, 6, or 11 are. But when life beats your ass and you feel so dysregulated and disconnected from yourself, those are the people who can look at you and say, I love you! You’re special! I remember when you used to make the two male dolls scissor! You’re so funny!

It’s the safest place in the world to be with people who knew you before you knew yourself. So, I started crying and I haven’t stopped. I’m actually crying while I write this, lol.

It’s these friends who give me perspective on what I’ve accomplished. They remind me that maybe the universe has put me exactly where I need to be, opening up the right paths for me, pointing me where I should go rather than where I want to go. Because those lifelong friends don’t see you as someone connected to a certain role or job or success or place — they see you as a whole, a journey, an evolution. They remember you when you had no front teeth and now here you are, with teeth.

Maybe this is just another essay where I am trying to make sense of the pieces in front of me. Maybe it’s just another essay where I am trying to weigh out my passion for writing against my lack of commercial success.

It’s like being blindfolded and spun in a circle and then sent into a mirrored maze. It’s not until you claw your way through that you realize how fucking stupid you looked stumbling over your own feet and groping walls, shouting for help.

And then comes the sympathy. “You did suuuuuuuch a good job! You got through soooooooo fast.”

But really, there are people not even going through the maze. They’re escorted around towards the back. We all show up at the finish line. Some of us just had to eat shit the entire way.

And so what am I supposed to do? Act like I didn’t just the longest panic attack of my life while crawling across the stickiest floor in America? Genuine question.

“This is a hard business!!!!!!!!!!!!”

No, it’s not. It’s an unfair business where we are asked to compromise authenticity for a readership that is assumed to be very white and pretty low brow. For me, that’s not a hard decision. I am always going to choose being authentic.

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Many of the songs of Charli xcx’s BRAT run together because of how thematically tight the album is. Recently when Sympathy is a knife came back into discourse, I kept confusing the general premise with another song on the album, Rewind, where Charli pushes deeper into the underlying theme of Sympathy is a knife.

She writes:

Used to burn CDs full of songs I didn’t know
Used to sit in my bedroom, puttin’ polish on my toes
Recently, I’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout a way simpler time
Sometimes, I really think it would be cool to rewind
I used to never think about Billboard
But, now, I’ve started thinking again
Wonderin’ ‘bout whether I think I deserve commercial success
It’s runnin’ through my mind
Sometimes, I really think it would be cool to rewind

It’s hard not to empathize with this message. I, too, wish I could Rewind back to the moment when it felt impossible to ever have a book with my name on it. When it was the simply idea of being published that felt like enough.

I wrote about this in another essay:

Lately, my author friends and I have been talking about the way publishing brings about what I’ve started calling the Midas Touch effect. You start off being the type of person who thinks gold is really cool and you’d like to have some, a baseline normal sort of greediness. You get your gold, but it’s not enough. You want— no, you need more gold. You touch everything you can. You can’t turn things into gold fast enough! And no matter how much gold you have, you’re always looking around thinking, “But they have more gold than I do! Everyone gets so much gold and all I have is scraps!” And very suddenly the thing that used to nourish you—creativity, writing, imaginative play—is reduced down to nothing more than its association with gold. Now, like Midas, you’re not only greedy, but also starving.

News is gold. Advances are gold. Press is gold. Writing, creativity, being an artist—that’s food. And you have to eat.

You didn’t start writing because you wanted to make money or because you wanted to be famous or praised or to be on lists or whatever. If noteriety had been the goal, surely there are quicker paths than the printed word. You started doing this because it fed you, nourished you. Made your soul feel ablaze and connected you to something divine and deep and immortal.

“This is all easy for you to say, Betty! You have a—”

Yeah, yeah. We all have something. Even if you’re unsigned, even if you’re still on submission and ripping your hair out every day. Wanna know what you have? Endless possibility. I know what kind of author I am, but you? You could be the next Sally Rooney. The first-ever debut author to sell ten thousand copies in one hour. Me? I’m just some schmoe in a Disney t-shirt who wrote half of this newsletter while eating tteokbokki in a hotel bed.

Do you see what I’m getting it?

But Charli doesn’t want to be on the Billboard charts, not really. Because…

‘Cause I couldn’t even be her if I tried
I’m opposite, I’m on the other side
I feel all these feelings I can’t control
Oh no, don’t know why
All this sympathy is just a knife
Why I can’t even grit my teeth and lie?
I feel all these feelings I can’t control
Oh no, don’t know

Is the world split into Charlis and Taylors? Are we all locked in the ultimate blondes vs. brunettes war? Are the niche girlies always yearning for commercial success while the commercially successful are jealous of us because we have still held onto a semblance of cool? There’s an argument to be made there, but I’m going to be totally honest, it feels like we’ve outgrown the metaphor.

It feels like maybe we need to push off the blindfold, regain our composure and ask why certain people always need to go through the mirror maze and others don’t.

But like. I’m tired lmao.

For this reason, I’m taking that extended break I mentioned in the beginning. I’ve turned myself off of Achievement Mode and instead of just renegotiating my relationship to this career ad nauseam in a public way, I’m actually going to start taking my own advice.

Look, I love you guys so much and I will keep writing newsletters and I will keep writing books. I just need to do it in a way that isn’t tied completely to my self-worth. I can not “mOvE tHe NeEdLe” on my own, no matter how hard I try. And man, have I tried!

So. It’s time for a break.

I need to go back and read my own damn writing, tbh.

Brb & love you forever,

Betty