I’ve always been a writer. I wrote my first book when I was 7 years old. It won a state award and was featured in my local library. This was my first taste of authorship, and the sense of identity and accomplishment it can bring.

Later, when I was in my teens, I discovered the other side of the equation—being a reader. I found the writer Henry David Thoreau and dedicated the next ten years to studying him, eventually earning a graduate degree in literature with a thesis on his unpublished works. I had a mentor—Brad Dean, a Thoreau Scholar and innovator in textual scholarship and digital media—who showed me the power of re-creating canonical works for a modern audience.

In these years, I learned the power of writing, how to read, and what makes great work speak to us.

Later, while working for almost a decade in public media at WGBH, PBS’s largest media producer, I learned what it takes to stay at the cutting edge of innovation, technology, and education. I produced content for Emmy-award winning projects, worked alongside some of our country’s most talented producers, and traveled the country delivering talks and workshops at national and international conferences. It was tough and fast-paced, but I learned that to truly reach others, you must really outpace trends in technology and communication.

I was also honing my own writing craft, eventually becoming a ghostwriter for Simon & Schuster, and publishing my own book on American Literature with them in 2017. It felt like I come full circle from when I was a 7-year-old, just writing for fun, but with now, a greater purpose.

I discovered I really enjoy ghostwriting and what it can do for people.

I consider ghostwriting a craft—no less than being an author.

It takes skill listening to another person’s ideas, knowing how to shape them without undue interference, and helping someone through the process of writing a completed work—which can be psychologically taxing, to say the least. An added boon to these skills? I became a Jyotishi, a professional practitioner of Vedic astrology, India’s oldest form of counseling, with the Council of Vedic Astrology in 2021. I know how to listen, “to get under the hood,” so to speak, to understand who a person is and how to motivate and help them shape their next steps.

In short, I know what it’s like to write a book, what it takes, and how to help others get it done. And I’m happy to do it.