At Absolute Love Publishing, we believe in creating goodness in the world. This post is one of a series in which we’ve asked our authors to explain why they choose to align themselves with our publishing house and why they use their craft to create goodness…

Absolute Love Publishing Author Sarah Hackley

As humans, we are innately drawn to meaning. We want to know what someone’s words mean, what their actions mean. We desire knowledge of the meaning of life and of our place within its circle. We need to know there is meaning and that it exists in everything.  

Writing gives us this. Writing—good writing—creates meaning. It takes the confusing, the disparate, the chaotic, the traumatic, and transforms it into a narrative that offers us a shimmering shard of truth, a shard we can wield or protect as we see fit.

As a reader, I have always needed that truth.

As a child and teen, I poured over the texts available to me, leaving the library week after week with books—stacked knees to chin—precariously held between two hands. Once home, I’d devour the words, greedily looking for shards strong enough to pierce my fears, fragments large enough to cover the holes left behind by uncertainty. And, over the years, I found them.

With books by my side, I uncovered countless pieces of truth, long-dead voices offering solace. I used these pieces, these fragments, these shards. Through words, I unearthed meaning. Through words, I began to make myself whole.

As a writer, however, the insight gained from other writers wasn’t enough. To heal completely, I needed to create my own insight, to turn my own pains and confusions into transformative truths. In doing so, I hoped, I also would be able to pass on to readers the small pieces of meaning I’d managed to gather, as had the writers before me. From those pieces, I hoped, other readers would unearth their own small, shimmering shards, and thus the cycle would continue.

It is this desire to share in the continual passing of meaning, to transmute negativity into something worthwhile, something understandable, that compels me to write the books I write. It is also why I choose to publish with a house that is in alignment with those goals. Alone, I am one writer speaking to myself. Together with Absolute Love Publishing, I am one writer speaking to the world. Together, we help spread meaning and goodness in an otherwise muddled world.

Additional posts in the Creating Goodness Series:

Why I Use My Craft To Create Goodness … Steve Schatz

Why I Use My Craft To Create Goodness…Michelle Hastie

Why I Use My Craft To Create Goodness…Janet McLaughlin