Hey World, Look What I Made! A Year in Review

When I checked in on my website recently, I was jarred by the contrast between the direction my writing took over the past year and where it left off on March 1, 2025, the date of my last two posts.

I created this website in late December 2024, after three months of revising a hope punk zombie novel I’d started drafting a year and a half before. By then, I’d concluded the manuscript needed a full restructuring and, possibly, a shift from first to third person point of view. If you’ve written a novel, or are in the process of writing one, you probably understand how much time and energy those kinds of changes imply.

I once heard a playwright say she’d never write a novel because she’d seen too many of her novelist friends lose ten years of their lives to just one book. She preferred quicker wins. By the end of December 2024, I wanted some quick wins too, and decided to let the manuscript rest.

With a new year on the horizon, I decided to turn my attention back to writing short, non-fiction pieces—something I hadn’t done since my parents died in 2022. It felt like a welcome distraction. And, since I wanted a place to show off my “wins,” building a website seemed like the logical first step.

So I made myself a metaphorical fridge for all my metaphorical drawings. A place I could point to and say, “Look what I made!”

Once the website was up and running, I immediately uploaded We Are. Here., a favourite story I’d published on Medium in 2021. I then revised and republished some additional pieces I hoped would tell people about the passions and beliefs which inform all of my writing.

These included Hopeful Narratives: Transforming Our Future with Imagination, The Failure of Dystopian Literature, and Tolkien’s Eucatastrophic Tale: A Lifeline for Today’s Youth.

I also wrote a few new pieces, which I have to admit wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be after spending so much time on a long-form fiction project.

Finally, I created a spot for my Writing History to give folks a snapshot of what I’d been up to before December 2024. As well, I added a page for The Daily Scribblers’ Club, an online writing group I’ve been running since May of the same year. As I watched March roll into view, I was feeling pretty focused.

Then, I moved again, the third time in two years.

In the process of packing and unpacking boxes (for the third time, cough, cough, in two years, cough, cough), my mind had a lot of time to wander. And, what it kept wandering to was another hope punk novel I’d drafted between 2020 and 2021.

I discuss this novel in How Bali’s Sharma Springs Inspired My Eco-Fiction Novel and provide a brief excerpt in The Elora Sky Sanctuary.

Since two of the three sections of that novel had already undergone some revision, during these flights of fancy my mind took while I moved apartments, I imagined I could run through the manuscript in a couple of months and present a readable draft to beta readers by mid-July. I thought of it as another “quick win.”

At the same time, I decided I would also use this “down time” from the zombie novel to learn more about writing creative non-fiction. As I’d revised my older pieces for the website, I realized I’d been writing in that genre for quite a while. However, despite having majored in English Literature at university, I sensed I lacked the formal education to fully understand how to write it well.

Here are the books I read, in the order that I read them:

• Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola
• How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee
• The Arvon Book of Literary Non-Fiction by Sally Cline and Midge Gillies
• That’s What You Think: A Practical Guide to Writing Compelling Op-Eds and Short Memoirs by Scott Colby
• Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos

I was three quarters of the way through revising the eco-novel when I hit a wall. By then it was August, and amidst the revision process and creative non-fiction readings, I’d been getting non-stop ideas for short pieces, some of them satirical. As well, I was enchanted by the idea of writing an autobiographical novel, and had begun scribbling down snippets of it as they came to me.

Clearly, I was/am a writer in flux.

By October 2025, I’d swapped out Climate Fiction Writer/Regenerative Dreamer as descriptors next to my name on my website for Author in Evolution. (If you check now, you’ll notice I removed that one as well.)

By then, I’d also enrolled in two writing courses, Creative Non-Fiction: Introduction and Journalism Essentials, through the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. I was tired of doing all the heavy lifting on my own, and craved guidance.

Sidebar

In my Writing History I mention that I established my professional career as a writer through the publication of poetry. I also talk about how I was in the process of moving into short story and novel writing before becoming my parents’ caregiver. However, what I don’t say is that I’ve spent more of my life writing non-fiction than any other genre.

From 1997 to 2010, I volunteered as editor and writer for an Arts publication called Re:ACT Magazine, an offshoot of Arts & Culture Timmins, a non-profit organization whose mandate was to promote events, organizations, and individuals within the arts community of Northeastern Ontario. During that time, I wrote news articles, profiles, editorials and reviews, as well as solicited and edited the work of others. Throughout these years, I relied on books and online articles to teach me about journalism.

I later pivoted towards self-help writing for about 12 years while I ran a wellness business I’d founded in 2012. And, as I mentioned earlier, I began writing what I now recognize to be creative non-fiction in 2018, which I published as blogs on Medium and through my various websites.

For some reason, at the time, I never equated my non-fiction writing as Writing with a capital W. It was the thing I did on the side of my “real” (poetry/fiction) writing.

When I decided to formalize my understanding of creative nonfiction in the spring of 2025, it was also with this growing sense that almost all of my writing was, on some level, political. Even when it came to articles about well-being, I approached them with the belief that a better world starts with better humans.

Over the spring and summer months of 2025, I began to wonder if, to come into my own as a writer of political fiction, I needed to embrace non-fiction, and more specifically journalism, more formally.

What better way to do that than begin a certificate in Multi-Media Journalism at U of T with some creative non-fiction courses on the side? After all, many of my favourite novelists were journalists before they ever wrote fiction.

So what happened then?

October, November, and December 2025 were a whirlwind of activity for me. Under the guidance of Shenaz Kermalli and Debra Dundas, both professional journalists, I conducted interviews, learned about craft as well as form, and read great examples of the writing expected of me.

While interviewing folks for my class assignments, I connected with amazing people in Peterborough, my new home for more than two years and the city where I have now sampled three lovely apartments. I was even lucky enough to see one of the articles I wrote for the Journalism Essentials class published in the Peterborough Weekly, which I’ve included below.

(If you’ve read Discovering Trees: A Year of Reading for Reforestation, you’ll recognize Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s name from my reading list.)

I also revised the satirical piece I initially wrote in the spring, and submitted it to the Toronto Star and The Walrus. Although the Star passed on it, it’s still sitting in the submission pile at The Walrus. Satire is tricky to place, so it might end up here on my page someday. Either way, I’m pleased I polished it, happy with the results, and proud of myself for sending it out.

Finally, I’ve submitted We Are. Here. to the CBC Nonfiction Prize which remains open until March 1, 2026. Since that contest accepts self-published pieces, I thought I’d show some love to one of my favourites by sending it in.

I’m currently working on the autobiographical fiction piece I started drafting last summer. It’s undergone many revisions, and recently got a thorough critique from a fellow writer. I’m on the cusp of simply calling it a short memoir, but that is to be seen.

Next Steps

As you may have noticed, the one piece of writing I have not touched in over a year is the hope punk zombie novel I decided to let rest back in December 2024. And, although I’ve felt the pull a couple of times, I’m still not ready to return to it.

My feeling about it right now is that it needs to be completely rewritten. I see myself ditching the first draft altogether and starting from scratch, which excites me. I don’t see that happening until the fall, however.

From now till then, I’ll continue to focus on non-fiction writing. I have some new ideas for posts I’d like to add to this metaphorical fridge of mine.

I hope I last longer than March 1st this time!

Thank you for reading. ❤️

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