The fundamentally necessary job of hoping. by Anne Booth

I feel v aware at the moment that life is a struggle for many people. Personally, nationally and internationally there is a shocking amount of trauma and suffering about, and for many of us, very little we can do to stop it. It can feel a bit twee to look for positives, but I am not sure what choice we have - if we don't actively look for good things, we can spiral down into despair. The great thing about being a Children's writer is that looking for good things and believing in the importance of Hope, is built into the job - we have to make sure, for our audience,  that the things we write, even if we are writing about dark things,  (and especially if we are writing about  dark things,) have some light in them. It's our job, our discipline, whatever we feel, to do this, and it's a very very important one, and a great honour and a privilege. I wish I could stop all the wars and prejudice and hatred and poverty that are blighting our world, or solve climate change, but I know I can't. What I can do, however, and what all of us can do, is small good things, and if we are lucky enough to write, maybe one of the small good things we can do is to write stories which somehow represent hope for the future.  If we are fortunate  enough to write a book which gives comfort and hope to even one child reader, that's actually, when we think about how irreplaceable and precious each child is,  not a small thing at all. Obviously, we would all love to sell millions of books, but sometimes it's important to get things in proportion and forget the numbers. Even if so many things are terrible, and BECAUSE so many things are terrible, we must not give up hope in our vocation to write Children's books, and not be ashamed to light that candle of hope in our narratives, for ourselves as well as our readers, present and future, whether there are few or many - they all count - and Hope is real, and is fundamentally necessary for any positive change.