Hoping for Hope (Brenda Hiatt)

For some reason, this month’s topic has given me a lot of trouble. I considered writing about WHY we need hope. Then I mulled various hopes I have for the next few months, the next few years, my grandkids’ futures… The truth is, I’ve somehow let hoping and dreaming fall by the wayside lately, while caught up in the busy-ness of day to day. So I guess my number one hope right now is to get HOPE back! 

Beyond that, I guess I hope that the next book I write will be easier than the one I’m writing right now. I’ve mentioned before how difficult this one has been. I’m finally in the home stretch now, tying threads together and winding things up…in the first draft. Next comes revising. That’s usually my favorite part of the writing process, but I suspect that’s going to be harder than usual, too, because this book kept morphing on me as I moved forward. I finally figured out my through line, but now I need to go back and apply it from the beginning. Honestly, if my next book proves HARDER to write than this one, I’ll be tempted to just throw in the towel. Which would suck, because not only do I owe my readers closure on this series, I tend to get depressed when I’m not writing. So yeah, I’m hoping the next one will be that mythical “gift book” I sometimes hear authors talk about. 

In case some of you reading this also have difficulty finding hope sometimes, I want to share one of my favorite places to get an occasional hope boost: the e-magazine “Future Crunch.” Every issue (even the free, weekly version) contains a roundup of GOOD news from around the world. This is the kind of stuff that rarely makes it into the mainstream sources that follow the old mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Like the fact that over the past 15 years, India’s maternal mortality rate has been slashed by 60%. Or how reforestation projects in the Brazilian Amazon are going much better than expected, while deforestation was down 61% in January compared to the year before. Oh, and that crime rates in the US haven’t actually increased over the past 30 years, even though most people think they have. (In fact, prison populations have declined by 25% since 2009!) So next time you need an extra dose of hope, check out Future Crunch ( https://futurecrunch.com/goodnews/ )

I’ll sign off by wishing you all, and myself, a hopeful future filled with dreams!

Brenda Hiatt is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the award-winning Starstruck series, where the good guys always win (eventually) and deliver happy, hopeful endings.