Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Mary Oliver
Reading a sentence that rewires your view of how the world works.
Losing a whole afternoon to scribbling in your notebook.
Editing a draft and finally feeling it click.
The act of writing is magic. But it can also be hard work.
Working with me, you get encouragement and support for when the magic feels further away. I’m also a rigorous partner who brings my passion for close reading to every page of your project—and teaches you how to do the same.
How I Work
My Background
From an early age I loved telling stories. One of the best presents I have ever received was a hardcover book filled with creamy white pages. On the inside cover my mum wrote: “For stories.”
I wrote furiously throughout my childhood and teenage years, but after a disastrous creative writing class in my undergrad I lost all confidence in myself as a writer. I threw myself instead into the academic side of being a bookworm—eventually earning an MA in Modern and Contemporary Fiction.
It was through supportive writing groups—first in London and then Toronto—that I began to rekindle my own creative writing. Eventually I began teaching what I’d learned as a writing coach at Firefly Creative Writing, working with hundreds of writers and running dozens of workshops and retreats.
Every time I read a piece of your work, I study it as though I’ll need to write a term paper on it, examining it through lenses such as structure, story and character arcs, symbolism etc. I read everything you send to me more than once, taking multiple passes to really get to the core of a piece, and the mechanics of what’s working and what needs more attention. I always start my feedback with where the magic already is because—as I’ve learned with countless clients—this is actually what many writers are most unable to see.
Because there’s no one path to writing a novel, I offer tools and suggestions framed as ways to experiment with your writing. Every time I challenge you to try a new technique or way of working, we treat how it goes as data to discover what makes you (not anyone else) tick. My goal is to help you understand your process and the tools that work for you so that you can move forward with this project (and the next one, and the next one) with confidence.