Hope is an essential element to creating a book. For months, or years, or even longer, your book is going to be little more than a dream in your head and heart. You’ll breathe the ideas or the people into yourself, then breathe them out onto the pages. All along the days that fill those months and years, you need a way to say to yourself, “It’s gonna be great.”
That’s the place where hope lives in your life, the shelter from those moments of doubt, critique, or delusion. See, you can delude yourself in more than one way. Everybody will call delusion the unreasonable belief in a positive outcome. There’s the other delusion, though, the sort of story where you’re unreasonable about your prospects for your book. “It won’t make much of a mark,” you could say about its reception. “People might find it falls short.”
I protect myself from one delusion and encourage the other when I can live from a refuge for my hopes. That refuge is a shelter of kind talk to myself, comparing only when essential, plus the faith that every day can bring new mercies. Artists and creators need mercies, along with luck, to accompany their good energy of being a maker.
This afternoon I touched the first printed copies of Sins of Liberty. There are proof copies, printed by Amazon first, because Ingram is finishing second in my publication derby, even with a three-day head start. About 2 million titles are being published every year, with plenty of those titles printed on paper. The supply chains are swamped on some days, so you must be patient. Plus hopeful, and that’s where I look to my dog.
In my unboxing video — don’t forget to have a friend taking one of those for you — my pup Ella is right at my knees, looking up at what’s newest in our lives. Like all dogs, she’s patient and usually hopeful. Like my heroine Anna in my novel, my dog knows she’s got to show up and display her desire to get something good. Sometimes your hope has to be daring, like the times Ella snatches chicken strip off our countertop.
My novel was written across the lifespan of Ella’s ancestor, Tess Harding. That beloved pup lived 15 years and is related to Ella, sort of a sister dog. I’m always looking to the simplest creatures in my house for my hopeful practices. You might have a cat and feel the same way about it. Your friends and your family can be the shingles on your home of hope, too. Do whatever you can to tend to your structure for hope. The light of optimism will keep your eyes trained to find what you desire.
