Fast CompanyFour ghostwritten op-eds
I make complex topics feel simple.
I'm Mike Williams, and I'm a writer. I work with brands that have something complicated to explain and an audience that'll glaze over the second it gets technical. I take that stuff and make it relatable: start with what the reader's actually worried about, then write like I'm talking to a friend who asked. Lately that's mostly crypto, though honestly the subject matters less than you'd think.
Sometimes making it simple means killing the jargon. Sometimes it's turning a number into something you can picture, or digging out the history lesson underneath. Every example here is from a piece I published.
What you can hire me for
Four things I get hired to do.
The work people actually pay me for, and how the byline shakes out on each, since that's usually the first question anyone asks.
Explainers & educational content
The kind of guide that takes someone from “what is this?” to “oh, that’s what that means,” using comparisons they already understand. No glossary required.
Bylined or unbylinedGhostwritten op-eds
Opinion pieces written from scratch in your voice, start to finish. Four of them have run in Fast Company.
Under your bylineSubstantive editing
Taking a rough draft and reworking it until it holds together: structure, flow, whole sections rewritten, one consistent voice from start to finish.
Rough draft → publish-readyLong-form narrative
Longer pieces that actually argue something, carried by history, analogy, and story.
Blog, report, or featureAnd all of it, built to rank
Keyword research, search intent, and the structure Google rewards, worked into the piece from the first draft so it climbs the rankings without ever turning into keyword soup a human won’t finish.
In from the first draftFeatured Work
What I've been writing.
Op-eds for Fast Company, the research behind them, and the long-form work in between. A line from each, so you can hear the voice before you click.
Selected Works
My portfolio
Editorial content, ghostwritten op-eds for Fast Company, and long-form blog posts. All produced for the National Cryptocurrency Association. I write the kind of stuff that makes people think, “Oh, that's what that means.”
Off the clock
Proof I can do more than explainers.
When someone asks whether I can do more than explain other people's ideas, this is where I send them. Fiction, essays, and a serialized dark-fantasy novel about magic that costs the body. All on my Substack.
Nightcaps
Two sentences, posted late.
Little late-night stories I put on Substack. No client, no brief, nothing to explain. Just an image and a turn.
About
The short version, since you're busy.
Most topics that get called “complicated” are really just explained by people who forgot what it's like to not already know the answer. My job is to remember that feeling, then dig out the one part a normal person can actually hold onto. I left a tech career to do this, which sounds dramatic until you've sat in enough meetings to feel your soul quietly go beige.
Here's how it actually goes. I find the vending machine, the cloned cell phone, the savings account that explains the thing better than the thing explains itself. I start with what the reader's actually worried about, cut the hand-waving, and never pretend something's simple when it isn't.
Off the clock, I'm on Substack with fiction, essays, and the occasional 2 a.m. spiral over whether this whole career was inspired or just a productive quarter-life crisis. (Both, probably.) I'm in New York, open to freelance and contract work, and I will happily argue that Brokeback Mountain still hasn't been topped.
“Delicious!”
The fine print
Rights, AI, and privacy.
It's all mine
Every word here, the essays, the fiction, the nightcaps, belongs to me. © 2026 Mike Williams. All rights reserved. Read it, quote a line with credit, link to it. Don't republish it, sell it, or run it as your own.
Not training data
I don't give permission for anything I've written, here or on Substack, to be scraped or used to train machine-learning or generative-AI systems. Treat this as an explicit reservation of those rights. The fiction and the nightcaps are written by me, the human, start to finish.
Your privacy
This site isn't trying to figure out who you are: no login, no ads, and nothing about you gets sold. The contact form sends your message straight to my inbox, and I use it only to write back.
Not legal advice, just how I run things. Last updated June 2026.
Get in Touch
Let's talk.
I'm currently open to freelance and contract opportunities in content writing, editorial strategy, and educational content. If you need a writer who can make complex topics feel like a conversation, I'd love to hear from you.