Meet Our New Intern: Shelby Hansen

I wrote my first book when I was six years old. Of course, this was not what you would typically think of when someone says they’re writing a book. This was a stack of printer paper that I had stolen from my mother’s printer, folded in half, and stapled carefully down the spine to make a book-like shape. Then, I wrote the story of a troublesome kid named Henry inside, affectionately named after my kindergarten best friend. By the time I was done, the pages were riddled with misspelled words, badly drawn stick figures, and accidental pen markings. But I had finished a book, and that was the first time I felt like I had actually accomplished something.

For years, I continued this pattern, making my mom viscerally angry by “wasting” her perfectly good printer paper. Then, I found out that I could use spiral notebooks instead, and I began to write there. Most of the time, these little stories were never finished. My brain was always swirling with ideas, and each time another would come up, I would think it was better than the last and immediately get to work on it instead. It wasn’t until I discovered my very first book while cleaning out my desk one day that something clicked. I had loved that story so much because it had someone I loved in it. I had used my own experiences, as well as his, to create a story that meant something to me. And when I showed the original Henry, several years after they had already moved to a different school, the tears in their eyes showed me that it meant something to them, too.

From that moment on, my approach to writing changed. I was no longer looking to empty the contents of my brain’s creativity on the page; I was looking to make people feel, to find a way to evoke the same feelings I had when I read my favorite books. Even before I could analyze literature properly, I knew what their authors were trying to say. Every novel that I loved and cried over had a message, and I began to find ways to put my thoughts and opinions into my own stories.

Now, I find that writing is power. In an era where critical thought and originality is shunned rather than celebrated, all I can do is write. Sometimes, that means writing think pieces that will never see the sun in my journal. Other times, it looks like poring over the third draft of my debut novel, looking for meaning in every word. Either way, the writing I do alone empowers me to write for others, to share stories that makes people think, feel, and see themselves represented in a space where they may not have been previously.

If you take one thing about me away from this post, let it be this: my writing is my activism. The world can be an incredibly dark place, but it is up to us to not only find the pockets of light but to create them and share them. In truth, my writing has never been about me; it’s been about the people I love, the people I have met and have yet to meet, and those who cannot write or speak for themselves. It’s been about you, the person who is reading this blog post, and those who have already passed and will never get the chance to. The written word has a long history, one full of pain and joy. I aim to tip the scale and make the joy a little bit greater than the pain.

“There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

— Edith Wharton

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