This week, I delivered a box of books to my local art gallery. ‘If You’re Looking for Brightness’ has been given a little spot in the gift shop. While the moment itself wasn’t spectacular, the thought of my books on shelves felt like a huge goal achieved. Books not in a virtual cart. Not behind a “Buy Now” button. Not in a cardboard package heading to someone’s letterbox. But right there, resting alongside works of art, waiting for hands to pick them up.
It’s my fourth book, but the first to have a shelf life, the kind where someone might stumble upon it without ever knowing my name, yet still feel the pull to open the cover.
I started publishing independently in 2020, but that’s not when this journey began. Of course, the writing started long before that, before I knew what shape it would take, before the ideas were even fully formed, before I had the nerve.
It takes a certain push to write. The act itself can be easy enough, pen on page, words spilling out. But to keep writing, day after day, is another story. And then to publish, when no one is asking for it, when you’re funding it from your own pocket, when you know you still have room to grow in crafting a sentence or shaping an offering that not only makes sense but enriches another, that is something else entirely.
Publishing is a different kind of bravery. It’s the willingness to say, I made this, and I want to share it with you. Let’s be honest: most hobbies, fishing, pickleball, scrapbooking, can be quietly enjoyed. Publishing, though? It’s personal work done in public. It’s opening the door to your inner world and inviting strangers in.
And yet, here I am. Four books later.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that art is brave. It’s cumulative. It’s a series of small, faithful steps. And every now and then, those steps lead you somewhere you’ve never been before, like the day you find your book sitting in an art gallery, breathing quietly among paintings and sculptures, waiting to be discovered.
I’m celebrating this moment, because it’s more than just placement on a shelf. It’s a reminder that the work we believe in, the work we make out of love, finds its way into the world in its own time. And sometimes, it makes a home in the places you’ve walked by countless times, the ones that seemed ordinary, until suddenly they’re holding a piece of your story.
Offering your art is an act of trust. You release it without knowing where it will land or how it will be received. You place it in the hands of the world, hoping it might meet someone at just the right moment. It’s about letting it belong to others in ways you can’t predict. In that way, sharing art is as much about giving as it is about creating.
So, whatever it is you’ve been holding close, be it a poem, a painting, a song, a handmade object, consider what it might mean to offer it in the spirit of generosity. Your community, however small or wide, is shaped and strengthened by the things the people within it share.