Dear Fellow Kanji enthusiasts,
I could please use a word of encouragement. I’m on level 10 and nothing has burned. My queue is longer than I can do every day, so now I don’t see words as frequently as I should and I start to forget more, snowballing my queue even more. I feel underwater. I will keep chipping away at it, would appreciate a hello from fellow humans right now. Thanks.
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I’m slowly doing reviews after having built up a large backlog and then going into vacation mode. I will not be doing any new lessons until I whittle down the pile of reviews.
I have just started writing down the items that I get wrong, in the hope that that may help improve my memory. In some cases, If I miss a reading, I also review the meaning, and vice-versa. I’m also taking the opportunity to learn and practice stroke orders.
Since I’ve just started doing that, I don’t yet know whether or not that strategy will actually work, though…
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Coincidently, I’ve just had this context sentence:
Anyway, it’s perfectly ok that not everything sticks. That’s the whole point of SRS – to find out which items you know well and which you don’t and show you the latter more often.
Also, you might want to slow down a bit. It’s important to find your own pace and use it to study.
In any case, may the Great Cat of Purrseverance help you overcome these problems! 
I’d recommend not doing any new lessons until your reviews are under control otherwise it’s going to snowball until you completely burn out.
Level 10 is a nice round number, maybe take this symbolic opportunity to take a lesson break for a little while until you get the content of the first 10 levels under control before starting the push for 20?
Those first 20 levels are by far the most important, they’re worth doing well I think.
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Thank you all for the kind words and shared stories. I think stopping adding new words right now sounds wise. It’s frustrating because I’m finally getting awesome words that I really want to learn (instead of … 光年… which is now a lvl 45 word even though I’ve answered it 19 times?! wtf happened there? https://www.wanikani.com/vocabulary/光年 苦しい )
See you all later, when the sky is blackened with the smoke of turtle shells.
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Words get shifted around from time to time, it happens. Sometimes based on feedback, sometimes on the sense that other words should have priority first without causing overload. I have plenty of words that are now in later levels too.
And yeah, if you’re feeling crushed by reviews, sorting them out before doing more lessons is the way to go. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon after all. And Simias is right, the first 20 are the most important levels on here, so you being halfway there already is a very good sign. You’d be surprised how many things you can read and understand if you don’t stop yourself from going “Nah, this is too much kanji” at first glance at this point.
Keep at it, and good luck!
Seconding to stop lessons asap until your daily review amount feels manageable. If you don’t have enough time for the amount of reviews, choose a fixed amount (50 reviews per day) and do that. It will whittle down eventually.
How much contact are you getting with the language outside WK? Are you doing any grammar study or reading/listening? Seeing words in other contexts will help with retention.
I only just reached level 11 and things started to burn in the middle of level 10 for me.
I recommend not adding any new items and determining an Apprentice item count that works for you. (This will go up slightly when you get new radicals, but should drop back down once those move up.) Also don’t worry too much if you can’t get your reviews down to zero each day. It’s better to have some left at the end of the day than to cause them to drop a level due to mental fatigue.
If you want to study but your memory is not up for reviews, look through the kanji/vocab lists and review items that way. That will help you see the items more frequently than reviews pop up.
Alternatively, you can deal with a medical emergency (yourself, family, or a pet) and come to a realization that putting in any amount of work towards studying Japanese each day is more important than how quickly you can level up. This is my current existence, and while it helped reframe things in my life, i do not recommend it 
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Sending words to validate that it happens. Agree with others about slowing down new lessons so you can gradually catch up at your own pace. I keep reminding myself when I have periods of slowing down even if I only have a few minutes to study on a given day, that’s still a little closer to getting to my goals from when I started!