I’m torn. I want to follow book news to keep up with the industry. At the same time, it’s so depressing. Every day, there’s an article, or two, or four, saying how publishing is dying, no one is reading, and no one is getting their books into print.

In real life, I don’t find this to be the case at all. People read plenty, books are dominating our cultural landscape, and I know lots of writers getting publishing deals or agents right now. I’m not saying there’s no truth whatsoever in the doom and gloom stuff, but sometimes it feels like everyone in the publishing industry is re-enforcing everyone else’s self-fulfilling prophesy. It makes me want to crawl into a closet and hide.

The reality is, writing has always been hard. And while I am concerned about aspects of the doom and gloom stuff, reading about it every day makes my own writing life suffer. It’s harder to write when I am discouraged.

So I go back and forth. I want to get the news and keep up with things, but I also don’t want to hear negative Nellys say that writing is pointless because in a few years, the book will be dead. The truth is, storytelling will never die. It’s part of being human. I know that perfectly well, but sometimes it’s hard to remember when everyone is bemoaning the coming book apocalypse.