Here comes my favourite story of the year! In this year’s summer Writing Battle, we had 72 hours to write a 250 word nanofiction story. I got the genre of failed experiments, and had to incorporate the character of a charming thief and the word “daring”.

The story as it appears on my blog is slightly different from what I submitted, as I edited a few words here and there for flow and grammar, but it’s largely the same as my contest entry. I managed to get into the top 4 of my genre with this one! (Writing Battle uses tournament-style judging, so I don’t have a definitive placement.) My performance notwithstanding, this piece is the one from this year that I’m the most proud of.

This year, I’ve been participating in a variety of creative writing contests as a way to improve my craft. Under the time pressure (often only 24-48 hours, up to a week) and stringent word limits, I became judicious with my vocabulary and creative with my sentence structures. All these different challenges have been excellent learning experiences to elevate my long-form writing projects. Of course, some part of me also wanted to compete in these contests for the recognition—to prove to myself that I can write stories which receive acclaim without my name attached to them. Although I haven’t won any, my strong performance has still been encouraging.

As we close out 2023, I want to share some contest pieces I’m particularly proud of. The story I’m sharing today was written for Round 1 of the NYC Midnight Rhyming Story Challenge.

Lately, everywhere I go on the internet, conversations about ChatGPT and DALL·E are inescapable. As a writer and artist myself, I find the debates about whether AI-generated art is “real” or whether it should be as valuable as human creativity particularly interesting. While I certainly could, I feel that there is no value in me tossing another opinion out into the ether-void.

Instead, I’d like to propose a fun little game. Have you ever heard of the game, “Two Truths and a Lie”? Well, two of the following three short stories were written by me. One was partially written by ChatGPT, with edits by me so it’s not too obvious. Can you tell which one it is?

During the pandemic, I wrote dozens of short stories and poems. Most were fuelled by my longing for human interactions. The unpredictable yet undeniably human moments only created when others are around. Although lockdowns are a thing of the past in my part of the world, the loneliness of that time still lingers.

I share these stories in honour of everyone who has supported me these past two years, showing me enough kindness for me to understand how to give it to myself. With all my heart, I hope that even one of these stories moves or entertains you.

In 2017, during my undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, I participated in a student-led research initiative dubbed The Grandparent Project. For the project, I produced a piece about my relationship with my mother and negotiating identities. Rereading this piece five years later, I am surprised by how much and how little has changed. Despite how far I’ve come in these intermediate years, personally and professionally, I still feel the same sense of unease that I did as an undergrad.

This article is one of my favourites that I have ever written. I am re-posting it here, on my personal blog, with some editorial changes to both the English and Chinese text.