allanhunter.net Blog

The advance copies of the new book Stories We Need to Know reached me today, and of course holding the book in my hands brought up a series of emotions.  At first it was relief - that sense of not truly believing it would appear in print, ever, and now the proof was here.  I’m familiar with that.  I’ve felt that with every book I’ve produced.  This time I was awake enough to give a brief prayer of thanks.

Then I felt something else; there was the sense of distance, as though one were watching a relative or sibling do something on a public stage, knowing that I was connected to the actions but also knowing that they had a life of their own, now. The book is on its own in the same way.

Following that was another feeling.  It was that strange sense of having worked hard, having put one’s heart and soul into it, of having spent months in front of the keyboard translating the schema in my head into prose that was recognizable, and the resultant volume is so small!

In all this the Ego (my ego) was trying terribly hard to get a foothold of some sort so it could stir me up to anxieties about…   Well, luckily I saw that one coming, and headed it off.  Instead I saw that it was all just perfect as it was.  The ideas would now be able to get out into the world and perhaps change a whole series of minds, and that would probably be a very good thing.  I’m grateful to have been chosen by the muses to relay these ideas, and I’m delighted to have been able to do their bidding, however imperfectly.  Gratitude is the big one, here.

This seems to me to be the center of it.  As I now move into preparing the next volume for publication (for Fall 2008) I’ll also have to take the time to serve these ideas that have been placed in my hands.  That means readings, signings, workshops. I’ll have to arrange them and make it all happen, and I’m not all that familiar with the terrain.  Yet.

The adventure is about to begin.