My Story.
You can feel your heart steadily pounding in your chest. The anticipation tingles down through your arms, your fingertips sliding over the book cover.
What’s inside? What worlds are there, undiscovered? What characters are peeking through the words written on the page?
You breathe it all in and open the first page, ready to dive into a new story.
Ah, pure bliss. We just love new stories, don’t we? I know I do. I’m betting you do, too. But what is it that you love so much about them? Is it the escape to another world? Is it losing yourself in the story? Is it the characters, who become as real to you as the pages you turn?
For me, it’s about the power stories hold. As readers, we each imagine books we read slightly differently. We feel what the characters feel. We hope with them, love with them, and get excited with them. We are connected to them.
How incredible is it that by reading words written on pages, we are taken to worlds not even in existence? How awesome is it we find a connection to people alive only because of markings on paper?
Words are powerful.
But imagine for a moment that words were never written down.
We would have no record of great minds, of the impact words have when heard. Imagine Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech only remembered through the minds of people that heard it. Imagine Tolkien having to weave his epic tales with his voice, and anyone who repeated the words lost tiny little pieces at the heart of his stories. It would be like one giant game of Telephone, unending, and unsatisfying. It would be tragic; the magic would be lost.
Words are powerful. But recording them is where the real power lies.
There is so much in our hearts and minds that is heavy. Putting it out into the air is not enough. It needs to be somewhere solid, long-lasting. Forever recorded. Because that’s what gives it so much power.
Words are so linked to thought and action and change and growth. If they’re merely in the air, spoken, there is nothing strong enough to handle the weight of them.
So I write. And I read.
And I acknowledge the weight words carry.
So tell me… why do you read? Why do you write?
Renate Hancock’s author portrait done by Recollections Photgraphy.
Hi, I’m Renate Hancock.
For me, writing has always been a push and pull. Sometimes I fight against it, sometimes I’m tugging at it, but the need to write is almost an addiction. It brushes aside my previously laid plans, demanding to be acknowledged. So here I am, acknowledging it.
I was 15 when I started my first book. Then it was poetry. Pages and pages of teenage fears, hopes, insecurities and insights.
Since then, my relationship with writing has been as tumultuous as any writer’s.
“All I know for certain is that this is how I want to spend my life— collaborating to the best of my ability with forces of inspiration that I can neither see, nor prove, nor understand.”
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
I have loved and hated writing; the curse and the dream of it. I’ve been chasing it and fleeing from it my whole life.
Sometimes I find a rhythm, an in-tandem pace. Together, my creativity and I dance in a productive, symbiotic cadence.
This flow is what I live for. Work for.
Those days where my characters spill out through my hands, materializing into a medium that acknowledges their weight.
I record the words. Write them down so those characters aren’t lost in the black hole of creation. They need to be seen. Heard. Felt.
My characters are alive. They’re alive in my head. But they’re also alive in you. In your friend. In your child. In your spouse. In your grandmother’s memory.
They are connected to the living because in their stories we see our own.
You know what it’s like. You fall in love with a character, their world, their essence. You feel as if you know them, inside and out. You become so wrapped up in their life—for a brief moment—you forget you aren’t them. That you aren’t their best friend.
You’re so emotionally invested in them you feel their pain, their hopes, their frustrations. You are connected.
We understand characters like that because we have experienced similar situations ourselves. Or similar emotions. We’ve had loved ones and acquaintances who had characteristics mirrored in the characters we read and write.
I write for those connections. I write to see my father’s twinkling eyes in the eyes of a character who appeared in my mind. To hear my own best friend’s advice echoed by my main character’s sister.
I write to help others see their own experience written. Bearing the weight.
I write to show that trauma, however seemingly insignificant, can leave marks that affect us for years. Your trauma is heavy, but that doesn't mean no one understands.
I write for hope. For you. For me. For them. And for the world.
I’m curious. What do you hope for?
I reside in a small town in Colorado with my husband. We have four grown, wonderful children, each with their own families.
I live for the rustling of the aspen leaves, the crisp mornings in the spring, and the moments of treasured connection I witness every day.
Join me, and be a part of the connection.
