Essays
Essays is the home for my nonfiction writing.
These pieces grow out of lived experience and sustained attention to the forces that shape private lives: family, care, responsibility, identity, power, and belief. Some essays stay close to the personal. Others step back to examine patterns, systems, or tensions that resist easy resolution.
What connects them is not argument or conclusion, but a commitment to looking carefully and allowing complexity to remain intact.
The Best Gift: A Family Holiday Tale About Giving
A heartfelt introduction to The Best Gift, a family holiday tale inspired by a real moment of love and the quiet joy of giving.
Breaking Free: When it’s Time to Try Something New
A tale about the courage requited to break free from old habits and tradition when they no longer work.
Character Revealed: Actions as the Ultimate Test
A reflection on character, accountability, and why actions—not intentions or words—are the truest measure of who we are.
Facing Down Doubts and Claiming My Artist Identity
A reflection on being told “you’re not an artist,” and what it takes to claim creative identity despite doubt, criticism, and fear.
Short Stories: A Year of Creativity and Growth
A reflection on a year of writing short stories—how short fiction fuels creative growth, experimentation, and new ideas beyond the novel.
How to Know When Your Writing is Good or Sucks
A personal reflection on perseverance, criticism, and learning how to stay committed to writing when feedback is difficult.
Quiet pieces shaped by lived experience. Moments of pause, noticing, and meaning.
Writing from inside the work—endurance, doubt, revision, and the long middle where stories resist and slowly take shape.
