I write. I have for most of my life. But I’m careful about which word I use for what I actually do, because I don’t think they’re the same thing.
Writing keeps you enclosed in the words on the page. It doesn’t fully embody the story in and of itself. Storytelling is something else entirely — the voice, the pause before the reveal, the expression on your face while you’re telling it and on theirs while they’re receiving it. Honestly, I believe I tell a better story out loud than I write one down.
The emotional experience
There’s something about inviting someone into your emotional experience of a thing, in real time, that a page on its own can’t quite manage.
I think that’s part of why certain kinds of content do so well now — people letting their reactions show alongside the story itself, not just reporting the words of it. Everyone responds to stimuli differently, and to me, storytelling is the act of pulling someone into your particular experience of a thing, not just the facts of it.
So when people ask what I do, I don’t reach for “writer” first. Writing has rules, guardrails, requirements, and I follow them when the page calls for it. But storytelling is the thing that actually moves me — bringing someone along on the journey, not just describing where it went afterward. I put things down on paper. But I put myself in the category of storyteller, not writer.
Mirror Me launces February 2027