A Reflective Exploration of Storytelling, Ghostwriting, and Photography

For as long as I can remember, stories have been my compass.

Sometimes they arrive as a sentence in the quiet of a morning; sometimes they appear in the way light folds over a windowpane. Over the years, I’ve come to realise that storytelling isn’t confined to words on a page. It’s an instinct, a way of seeing. Whether I’m writing a book for someone else, framing a photograph, or penning my own reflections, I’m chasing the same thing: truth in texture, the subtle, often unnoticed pulse of what makes something human.

My relationship with stories began, unsurprisingly, with writing. As a child, I started with dear diary entries, private confessions that slowly turned into poems as I grew older. The poetry of my teenage years was dark but beautiful in its honesty. Over time came courage, and with it, acknowledgement, which eventually led to The Girl I Buried, The Woman I Birthed, my debut poetry collection. Those early words taught me that writing is not just expression but excavation, a way of unearthing what we once hid and honouring what we’ve become.

As I grew, so did my relationship with words. I began shaping stories beyond my own, hesitant paragraphs that turned into essays, then chapters, and eventually, into books. As a ghostwriter, I’ve spent countless hours listening to voices, silences, and the pauses between sentences where the real stories often hide. Writing for others is an act of surrender. It requires dissolving your own ego so that the story belonging to someone else can come alive in your hands. There is a quiet intimacy in that process. You learn that storytelling isn’t about being heard. It’s about helping someone else find the courage to speak.

Photography came later, almost by accident, yet it felt like a continuation rather than a detour. Where writing gave me language, photography gave me stillness. It taught me to look before naming, to hold space for a moment before interpreting it. Behind the lens, I found the same rhythm I do when I write: a pause, a breath, an attempt to understand something ephemeral before it disappears. I began to see light the way I see sentences, each frame a fragment of narrative, each shadow a punctuation mark.

The transition between these worlds, words and visuals, was never deliberate. It unfolded naturally, guided by curiosity more than ambition. But looking back, I see a thread. Both forms are, at their core, acts of translation: translating feeling into form, experience into meaning, chaos into coherence. Whether it’s a memoir, a photograph, or a line in a journal, what I’m really doing is trying to make sense of what it means to be alive, here and now.

Ghostwriting, in particular, changed how I perceive people. It’s impossible to tell someone’s story without first entering their world; their fears, their contradictions, their hopes. You become a mirror, one that reflects not perfectly but truthfully. And in doing so, you start to notice echoes of yourself in every narrative. That’s the quiet beauty of this work: every story you tell becomes part of your own.

Photography, meanwhile, taught me patience, a creative discipline built on listening with your eyes. You wait for light, for alignment, for a heartbeat to reveal itself. It’s not unlike waiting for the right sentence. The two crafts feed each other: writing sharpens my eye, and photography softens my words. One teaches structure; the other, surrender. Together, they’ve shown me that creativity isn’t a profession. It’s a way of being in the world.

In recent years, I’ve come to appreciate that every creative act, no matter how different in form, asks the same questions:

What do you see?

What do you feel?

What do you want to say?

Everything else, the tools, the technique, the title, is secondary.

Today, my work sits at the intersection of these mediums. I still write, photograph, and collaborate, helping others bring their stories into being while exploring my own. I no longer worry about fitting into one label or niche. The creative life, to me, isn’t about choosing between disciplines. It’s about allowing them to speak to each other. It’s about embracing the movement between them: the stillness of an image, the rhythm of a sentence, the emotion that ties them together.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that stories don’t belong to us. They pass through us like waves, leaving behind traces of salt and memory. Our only task is to pay attention to the light, the pauses, and the people who cross our paths. Because in the end, storytelling isn’t about mastery. It’s about connection.

And that’s what keeps me returning to the blank page and the empty frame: the endless possibility of seeing and being seen all over again.

If you’d like to explore words or visuals that speak to your story, I’d love to hear from you.