Naomi’s Writing Journey

Behind the scenes of my debut novel, personal reflections, and insights on writing.

  • What I’m Reading This Spring: Three Books, Three Kinds of Curiosity

    Spring is traditionally the season of new beginnings — but for me, it’s also the season of renewed curiosity. This year, even in the wake of a profound personal loss last month and a major geographic transition this month, my reading stack has taken an unexpected but oddly harmonious turn. On the surface, these three…

  • Between Two Lives

    Over the past two weeks, my life has changed in ways that are both profound and strangely quiet. On March 16, my mother died. For the past twelve years, I had been living in Thunder Bay as a caregiver—first for both of my parents, and then for my mother after my father died in 2018.…

  • How Stories Change Us While We’re Writing Them

    I’ve been thinking lately about how stories leave their fingerprints on us. We talk so much about shaping characters, refining arcs, and building worlds that we sometimes overlook the quieter truth: the act of writing shapes us, too. Every long project I’ve ever worked on has changed me in ways I usually only understand in…

  • The Spaces That Shape My Stories

    Writers talk a lot about “sense of place,” but what I’ve realized over the years is that every writer has a very particular sense of place — the kind that makes them feel grounded enough to create. For some people it’s mountains, forests, or wide lakeside vistas. For me, it has always been cities. Maybe…

  • What I Learned About Creativity Last Year

    January always feels like a pause between breaths — a moment when the old year hasn’t quite let go and the new one is only beginning to blink awake. It’s a good time to look back, gently, and consider what the past twelve months have taught me about the strange, beautiful, unpredictable process of making…

  • Creative Cartography: Mapping Where Stories Want to Live

    December has settled in thickly here — the kind of winter that arrives with its own architecture. Snow rounding the edges of rooftops. The hush that falls over everything once the temperature drops. The way the landscape simplifies itself, stripping down to its essentials. There’s something about winter that makes me think about place in…

Subscribe

Enter your email below to receive updates.