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.
How Do You Know When You’re Making Forward Progress
A reflection on measuring real progress in writing, where collaboration, conviction, and adaptability matter more than speed.
Fear, Flight, Hope – The Creation of a Short Story
A behind-the-scenes reflection on writing, revising, and reshaping a short story under creative and structural constraints.
Rediscovering Joy in the Coming Year
When grief, political loss, and global instability began to erode my sense of joy, I went looking for a way forward, through books, writing, and lessons learned from watching my daughter choose what she can and cannot carry.
‘Twas the Day After Christmas
A darkly satirical take about power, accountability, and why words—and consequences—still matter on a classic Christmas poem.
The Monster Within – a Short Story of Abuse, Survival, and Power
Tina knows monsters exist because she has survived one. When she fights back to save her life, she discovers that killing a monster does not guarantee freedom, especially when power decides who is believed and who is erased.
Embracing Light, Shadow, and Darkness to Create Interesting Stories
A writer’s exploration of how embracing light, shadow, and opposition in character development transformed a stalled draft.
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.
