Books

I’ve written stories in a variety of genres.

Taking the time to write a novel puts other things in your life on hold. After spending a few years in Los Angeles, replacing Hollywood for the trees around Oregon had a stark, contrasting feeling. I quickly realized that living in Portland didn’t feel right for me in the sense of allowing the same endeavors and spontaneous creative connections to happen, but I stayed there all the same and lost track of time. This period of my life is marked by inward creation. Writing books does not often give rise to any exciting stories during their making, because you’re just sitting there thinking and typing.

In the end, I spent so much time typing in Portland that you’d think a great number of works were completed there, but curiosity would have that my first book was finished during an intervening stint in Rhode Island, and my second was completed in New York City. The Pacific Northwest became a place where I met good people outside creative circles, where foundations were laid, but it represents a peculiar void compared to where my life was headed beforehand.

Nowadays I type in New York. It was a long walk to get here, it is undoubtedly a different place than when it tucked at my heart many years ago, but the people are always doing things and they knit together a community that I haven’t seen anywhere else in the world. The sheer mix of dreams and variation can be contagious.

Thinking out loud

Snippets from notes and conversations over the years

I don't know how to write books. If you look around well enough, you'll see that agents, editors, publishers, and everyone in between, they don't know how to write books either. They only know how others have written books previously. Somehow they're comfortable with using that as a measurement for approval, and most of them can't see the irony in holding that position.

Mick René Hansen