Essays
Essays is the home for my nonfiction writing.
These pieces grow out of experience and 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.
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.
Bliss, Struggles, and Epiphanies: My Two Years in Writing
A two-year reflection on learning to write fiction, from early enthusiasm through struggle and overwhelm to persistence and forward momentum.
Struggles of Mental Health: A Look into Hope and Madness
A reflection on mental illness, family caregiving, and the systemic gaps that shape the lives of those living with bipolar disorder.
A New Writer’s Review of Your First Page by Selgin
A craft-focused review of Your First Page by Peter Selgin, examining how first pages reveal the strengths and weaknesses of a story.
New Writer’s Review of Anatomy of Story by Truby
A craft-focused review of Anatomy of Story by John Truby, examining character development, four-corner opposition, and story structure.
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.
