For the Holidays

This is my favorite Christmas card of the year. Books can do this too–at least I trust that is true. Sometimes writing can be a hard and lonely and anxious profession, and it’s easy to wonder if it’s worth it. If you know you’re not a genius, but a hard worker and a producer of stories that may touch a few but will not top the best-seller list–is it worth doing it, year after year?

I hope so. I hope adding good books (perhaps not brilliant books, but good ones) to the world is worthwhile, since reading takes us into another’s experience, pulls us out of our own anxious, hunched-over, cramped experiences and lets us breathe. Lets us look around to the horizons. Lets us say, “Look how much is out there.”

We’re here for that. For what is out there.