My
Story
I’m Heather Nicholson — an author and former high school English teacher.
For years, I stood in classrooms asking students to write. I watched the same moment repeat itself: blank pages, hesitation, questions that weren’t really questions. At the time, I thought that moment was about motivation or confidence.
I see it differently now.
After leaving the classroom and spending more time inside my own writing practice, I began to understand how much emotional weight writing carries — especially before a single sentence exists.
That shift didn’t make me an expert.
It made me more reflective.
THE TEACHER → WRITER SHIFT
Teaching writing taught me how students experience pressure, judgment, and performance long before a grade appears. Writing afterward taught me how true that was.
The distance between those two roles — teacher and writer — is where most of my thinking now lives.
I’m interested in:
-
how writing feels before it works
-
why freedom can feel heavy
-
how small entry points change everything
-
what teachers notice once they stop trying to fix every moment
That reflection lives alongside my fiction, not apart from it.
ABOUT THE HOBBES PERSPECTIVE
The Hobbes Perspective is a reflective space rooted in hindsight.
It’s shaped by:
-
years in secondary classrooms
-
my current life as a working writer
-
conversations with teachers still inside the system
It’s not research-driven or prescriptive.
It’s observational.
It’s slow.
If you’re looking for a program, this won’t be that.
If you’re looking for language for something you already sense — you may find it here.
ABOUT MY FICTION
My fiction explores identity, memory, and interior transformation. I’m drawn to emotionally driven narratives and the quiet moments where characters realize something has shifted — even if they can’t name it yet.
Current work includes Metanoia, an upmarket novel-in-progress.
I don’t believe writing needs to be louder or faster.
I believe it needs to feel possible.