New fiction writer, who dis? — So I’ve been writing on Medium a while, and I figured it was time to introduce the human behind the lengthy rants on why literary fiction is awesome and how not to be yet another boring, consistency-is-key creator. …

And what I’ll be carrying forward from it — About a month ago, my husband and I won a slot in the 2023 Half Dome lottery. Objectively, that’s great news — Half Dome has been on my bucket list ever since I took up hiking last year. Except that the slot we got was just three days before another…

There’s a reason so many millions love him — If you haven’t heard of Tim Denning, you probably have a steady job that you’ve never had a bad thought about (in which case, lucky you) or you live under a rock the size of Mississippi. Tim is known for two things — his outspoken views against the corporate machine…

You truly never forget your first time — My first time applying nail polish was with a group of toddlers at a big sister’s house where the sister and her friend decided to play dress-up with us kids. I was four, and my mom scolded me all the time she was scrubbing it off, but I still remember…

No matter how objectively gifted you are — If you were a talented kid, this is almost certainly something you were taught to believe. People may have said it to you when you aced the end-of-year tests or won your umpteenth competition. Or you read books or saw films about misunderstood geniuses and instantly saw yourself in the…

Daily life has been so much easier — My husband regularly tries to sell me on how good Succession is. I’m aware that it’s a good show. Everyone talks about how tight the storytelling is, and as a writer, I love a good story as much as anybody. But apart from a mild spark of interest when I…

A “suitability test”, if you will — I’ve been writing literary short fiction for nearly three years now. But this isn’t my first rodeo. In 2015, I was going through a bad phase and turned to poetry as an outlet. I would read poetry compulsively, from the classics to the “Instapoets” (a burgeoning crowd back then), and…

This is the advice I wish someone had given me years ago — I still have the notebook in which I used to write back in 2015, when I was depressed, drinking like a fish and convinced that I would be the next Pablo Neruda. I don’t open it very often — I’m still not at a place where I can look back…

I wish more people wrote about these — There are bad writers on every platform, but LinkedIn seems to have the most. Especially since the creator craze began, every second person is on there trying to write the next life-changing post that goes viral and gets them 6-figure deals in their inbox. …