The first version of “Grandview Drive,” the titular story of my collection, was three pages long.

It was secreted inside of another story, one I wrote for a creative writing workshop. I can barely remember that story, but I do remember it was about a young writer trying to figure out what he should write about. I’ll call it “Radio” for now.

It’s funny to me—“funny” here meaning: strange and maybe entirely coincidental, but kind of interesting if it’s not just coincidental—how many young writers write about young writers, as if the age-old advice, write what you know, suggests to all of us that we should be writing about writers.

Back then, I was embarrassed to tell anyone I was writing. It was a new passion (though I had been jotting notes in notebooks for years), and if I were honest, I didn’t feel like I was any good, certainly didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing in any real way.

“Radio” was about a young writer who was embarrassed of his writing and felt like he didn’t know what he was doing in any real way.

He’d go to poetry readings or local plays or new films, and he’d secretly be judging the work, thinking he could probably do what they had just done, and he’d go home and write a story. He showed the first to his sister. She had some snarky thing to say, so he tossed it and wrote another. He showed this one to his girlfriend, another to his mother, and each time the reader had some sort of critique that sent him spiraling.

The story—the one I was writing—included his stories—the ones he was writing—embedded within, a sort of attempt at showing what it felt like—what I feel like—in writing a story, starting and stopping and starting over and starting again.

I showed “Radio” to my partner, and she said she didn’t get it, which sent me spiralling. She said, “I like this bit the best,” and pointed to the three pages that would turn into “Grandview Drive.”

I showed “Radio” to my creative writing instructor, and he passed it back with more read scratches than black ink, notes in the margin that asked questions like: “What do you mean by the word “interesting.” He told me Interesting doesn’t really mean anything unless you can show what it is you—or the character—means when you say it. He put looping circles around the three pages of “Grandview Drive” and said: “This is the story.”

The short version was really my attempt at writing a creepy short story. My partner had said, in response to another story—a short little love tale—that she thought short stories were supposed to be creepy. So in “Radio,” the sister says, “I thought short stories were supposed to be creepy," and the boy returns with “Grandview Drive,” a story of a peeping tom, the creepiest thing he could think of, named Merv.

I wanted the story to be creepy, but I couldn’t go all the way into creepy, back then. He was a weirdo—spying on women through the window, watching them work out, bounce on their treadmills—but he wasn’t going to attack or assault anyone, or even leave his car to get closer to anyone. His creepiness was loneliness, and when he was sitting there spying, he was mostly fantasizing about how perfect the strangers’ lives were. Once he got home, he let his imagination move toward more sexual fantasies. But sitting there on Grandview, he was just a dude. A lonely dude pretending not to be lonely. Was this yet another version of my young self? I didn’t realize that it probably was until years into the whole writing process.

The general consensus of the group at the workshop was that it was a good story—more than one of the students called it Interesting—but that it seemed to be hovering over the edge of something it was afraid of. The prof stepped in to say this was his main critique. He said the story is trying to be creepy, but it doesn’t quite get there. He said if it’s going to get creepy, it should go all the way creepy. “Or,” he said, “you can pull it back.” He paused for a minute. “He can’t be named Merv the Perv if you’re not going all the way creepy, for instance.”

I pulled it back a little. I did this by adding some details. I made him sad about his estranged relationship with his mother. I gave him an ex-girlfriend. I made him something of a Romantic in his fantasies on the street: A woman lifting her one leg when she kissed him, for instance, or white picket fences and friendly puppies and melting popsicles in his make-belief-perfect-world. I changed his name to Earl.

The story has gone through many changes and iterations. The first version was written in 2008; the first full version in 2009. As I made my way through the collection, and as I decided the stories would be more connected than I had originally envisioned, I went back to “Grandview” to change things, added things or removed them, to make it fit a little more with the rest of the collection, but for the most part: the story is as it was when I wrote it in 2009.

I have learned a lot about writing since then. I’m no longer embarrassed to say I’m a writer (even an author!), and I feel a little bit like I know what I’m doing—sort of. I do believe I’m a better writer in 2025 than I ever could have hoped to be in 2009, yet this story holds a unique place in my heart. The rest of the collection oozes out from this one, and, when everything is said and done, I think it’s a good short-story. I’m proud of it in a way I’m not proud of the others (though I’m proud of them all). Since the book has been released, many people have told me it’s their favourite of the bunch. And while sometimes I think it’s a shame the first story I wrote is still one of the best—even though I have ten years of training and thinking and practicing between it and the last few stories—most times: I simply feel proud that I wrote it.

The Audio story is available in the "Friend Tier" on binderybooks.com.