The Art and Economics of Ghostwriting

I was asked to share some thoughts on "The Art and Economics of Ghostwriting" in an article on AOL Daily Finance.

They say "everyone has a book in them." I say everyone has a spleen in them, too. In both cases, it takes a particular skill set to get it out. Obviously, baseline writing talent and solid knowledge of the craft are required for this job, but a good ghostwriter is also a good listener, meticulous researcher and all-purpose book nanny, with the ability to keep the client's secrets, build a bridge between the client and publisher, and completely set ego aside...

The article goes on to answer the three most common FAQs: "What does a ghostwriter do?" "How do clients and ghosts find each other?" And, of course, "How much do ghostwriters get paid?"

Read the rest here.

You look like you've seen a ghostwriter

Just in time for Halloween, a few ghosts who might startle you--bestsellers, Pulitzer, Nobel, and Oscar winners--writer's writers who moonlighted...

Katherine Anne Porter
In 1962, Porter's novel Ship of Fools sailed to the bestseller list and in 1966, she won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award for her Collected Stories. But her first published work was My Chinese Marriage by Mae T. Franking, a memoir about an interracial relationship (something almost unheard of in the 1920s.) Not surprisingly, after Porter became a literary icon, Franking's heirs collaborated on an annotated edition with Porter's name on the cover.

Larry McMurtry
Before he collected his Pulitzer for Lonesome Dove or his Oscar for...what was it--Terms of Endearment or his adaptation of Brokeback Mountain?--anyway, long before he was Larry McMurtry, he was the invisible hand behind several books, including Daughters of the Tejas by Ophelia Ray.

HP Lovecraft
Steven King, Neil Gaiman, and many other contemporary novelists claim prolific horror icon H.P. Lovecraft influenced their reading and writing lives, but Lovecraft wasn't a tremendous commercial success during his life. He made bank ghostwriting many short stories and several books, including Harry Houdini's Imprisoned With the Pharoahs.

Sinclair Lewis
In 1930, he was the first American to win a Nobel Prize for literature. He'd turned down a Pulitzer ten years earlier and was known for his critical views of capitalism. But even idealists gotta pay the rent. It actually makes sense that Lewis ghosted Tennis As I Played It for Maurice E. McLoughlin, who transformed tennis from a sissified rich man's game to a spectator sport the masses could, um...love.

Boo! (Scott Westerfeld on the spooky art of ghostwriting)

This week several people sent me links to this excellent article, "On Ghostwriting" by Scott Westerfeld, author of a popular YA Uglies series.

"I am a ghost writer, a literary doppleganger," says Westerfeld. "I write books that other people take credit for. People more famous than I, or busier, or who simply can't be trusted with a pen." He goes on to outline ghost parameters and protocol and addresses some of the pressing questions that haunt the field: "What are the implications of such duplicity? Is ghost-writing a case of false advertising? Is it simply bad manners, like bringing take-out to a potluck supper?"

Since Westerfeld ghosted fiction back when he was doing this sort of work, his perspective is a bit different from mine. As a celeb memoir ghost, I do for my clients what the Ghost of Christmas Past does in “A Christmas Carol” — I take them by the hand, lead them past their life experiences from the perspective of an observer, help them find peace with the characters who people their memories, and then excavate a language that expresses how they feel about it all. These stories are not mine to tell, so I’ve never felt that my words were being taken from me.

Quoth Westerfeld:

Reading reviews of one's ghosted works is an equally ambivalent experience. One is partially immunized from negative comments, but any high praise is half pleasure, half pain. For the ghost, the only real satisfaction comes from the phrase "competent prose." Some ghosts I know are haunted by their lost kudos...

Not me. I don’t writhe even a little when the book gets a great review, and I prefer that the reviews not mention me, because I want to do what a good ghost does: disappear. I can’t say how I’d feel about ghosting fiction, but I can say that the invisibility has become addictive. I never fight for cover credit; on a recent project, the client was the one who insisted my name be on the cover. She didn’t want people to think she was pretending to have written the book.

Ghosting forced me to examine the essence of why I write. I love living a creative life — and actually making a good living. I love the endlessly entertaining puzzle play of setting words in rows. I genuinely love listening to people -- my clients, airplane seatmates, random people on park benches and subways; I've never met a human being who was not fascinating and beautiful in some unique way. I love learning daily through research on everything from theatre history to bicycle racing to monoclonal antibody therapy. Public applause is a really pale reward compared to all that. I have a lot of love in my life; I’m not missing anything if strangers don’t love me.

I ghost memoirs for the same purely selfish reason I write novels: I love writing. Fame was never my objective. And candidly, I’ve hung around famous people enough to know that fame exacts a price I’m not willing to pony up. I’d rather be the piano player who does my thing and provides the ways and means for the jazz diva to do hers.

2008: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It's been a tempestuous year in more ways than one. We were battered by gas prices, election ads, and Hurricane Ike. We said goodbye to Studs Terkel, Sydney Pollack, Arthur C. Clark, Michael Crichton, and Eartha Kitt. (Not to mention these poor turkeys.) The publishing industry experienced some high highs (as a thousand Schnauzer puppies were named Brunonia) and some low lows (as Borders and B&N teeter on the edge of the cosmic bargain bin), and here in Blog Vegas, Colleen and I attempted to make sense of it all. A year-end inventory of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly always helps put things in perspective. So how was your year? We'd love to hear from you, celebrate your accomplishments, commiserate your losses, and/or share your outrage. Pop us an email or post a comment.

Here's my list:

The Good
Ghostworld was a trip this year. In April, I went to LA to meet with ridiculously multi-talented Kristin Chenoweth, who'd just finished doing a revival of "The Apple Tree" on Broadway. We clicked immediately. She's delightful. Huge heart, head on straight, and a laugh riot. While I was in New York doing the book nanny thing, my ed at Random House emailed me the new paperback cover of a project I worked on last year, Rue McClanahan's My First Five Husbands. I instantly recognized the photo of Rue from the original production of "The Apple Tree" back in the 1960s. Seemed like a good omen, and as it turned out, Kristin's project was a blast -- fabulous story, fun fun fun fun research, terrific editor, intensely educational legal review. Unexpected perks of the gig included becoming friends with Kristin's wonderful mom, Junie and best bud Denny, getting to hang out on the set of create-o-palooza "Pushing Daisies", and making the acquaintance of K Chen's famously on again/off again paramour, the brilliant Aaron Sorkin. He generously contributed a short chapter to the book and (totally above and beyond the call of menschly duty) spent time educating me on the screen trade and dialogueing about political, historical, and literary shoes, ships, and ceiling wax.

K Chen's memoir A Little Bit Wicked (think Anne of Green Gables meets Sex and the City) is due out from S&S in April. It's too early to talk about my next ghost gig, but I'm fully engaged, up to my neck in research, and loving it.

It was a great reading year, too. I stepped away from the sort of books I usually consume and worked through about a dozen screenplays. Aaron gave me a list and said, "Read these if you're interested in being lured over to the dark side. I think it's something you'd be good at." Too early to tell if he was right, but reading screenplays is an excellent way to study dialogue. I also delved into the seriously thinky thoughts of Clarence Darrow, Truman Capote, Aristotle, Plato, and some of the philosophical works I way didn't get but read when I was in college so I'd fit in with the hipsters at the Wunder Bar. I read only about a dozen novels this year. Mostly crime suspense thriller lawyer type stuff mixed with complete non sequiturs to cleanse the palate. Two freaky delicious diversions I particularly loved: The Annotated Nose by Marc Estrin and House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

The Bad
Last year, I declared my intent to separate my fiction and nonfiction identities and publish novels under a nom de plume from now on. It hadn't occurred to me that launching that fiction persona's career would be every bit as challenging as launching my own career twelve years ago. Progress is slow, but that's okay; my fiction life is a wheatfield, not a factory. The toughest thing about my professional year was making the decision to change agents. Again. This is always a stressful process that sucks a ton of time and energy away from writing, but I ended up with a fantastic agent who will hopefully never never ever retire, catch the flu or get hit by a bicycle messenger.

The Ugly
Being without power for almost three weeks after Hurricane Ike derailed both my WIP and my gym habit. We lost trees, fencing, and shingles (not to mention most of the skin off our knuckles during lumberjacking and clean up) but I did enjoy doing a guerrilla bookmobile for the neighborhood kids, and I was surprised and touched by all the lovely email and comments about that.

All in all, my year was a lot like a spaghetti Western. Hard labor in the hot sun, stunning reversals, agonizingly slow periods interspersed with mood music and dramatic posturing, stunning scenery, and over-the-top characters. In the end, Clint Eastwood speaks the words I'll take with me into 2009: "There's two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those with loaded guns and those who dig."

I dig.

For the Tool Box: Final Draft is the transcriptionist's BFF

I love research in general and the interview process in specific, whether I'm talking to an expert, gathering information that will make a fictional character ring true or listening to the life story of one of my memoir clients, corralling the facts that I know will be tested in the legal review. For the last five years, I've been using a terrific little Olympus digital recorder. I upload interviews to my laptop (backing up on an online storage facility), listen to them two or three times while I fold laundry or paint, and then I sit down to the task that will set the facts solidly in my brain and make the language "pullable" for the working draft: I transcribe the SOBs pretty much word for word. Yech.

There's nothing in the world that will make me enjoy this task, but it has to be done, so I'm constantly searching for anything that might improve on the process. A couple years ago, I found an upgraded program that enables me to slow the playback to 50% or speed it up to 200%, which helps me keep up with the important passages and blast past the interruptions and tangential chit chat. (I'm a southern girl; we tend to go off topic.)

A screenwriter friend recently introduced me to Final Draft, the standard industry software for the creation and delivery of movie and television scripts. I found the best price at The Writer's Store, and picked up on it quickly and easily. His intention was to "lure me to the dark side", but as I learned Final Draft, I quickly realized that this would make transcribing interviews a whole lot faster and easier.

For one thing, it automatically plugs in the name of the character talking. Once you've typed the person's name once, it's stored and suggested as soon as you tab to start a new voice and pop the first letter. If the conversation is between two people, you don't even have to pop the first letter, Final Draft instantly recognizes and suggests the alternating voices. Nifty.

Final draft also sets up the standard screenwriting format, which is an easy-on-the-eye Courier font with wide margins and center placement.

Everything about your co-dependant relationship with Word will be fed with Final Draft: search and replace, spell check, yada yada.

So that's my favorite tool box addition for the year, I think. I spent about 75 hours this week transcribing over 500 pages of interviews. When I finished the final hour last night, I sat on the edge of the coffee table while Gary massaged lotion into my aching hands, wrists, and forearms. I'd been typing so much faster than I normally do, every muscle from elbow to pinkie was a flaming licorice whip of agony. Which leads me to my second favorite toolbox addition of the week: gel keyboard bumper. Check it out.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

One of the most virulent self-sabotaging viruses with which I inject myself is this compulsion to post-mortem meetings, parties, and conversations with my agent, editors, and memoir clients. Did I say the right thing? Did I talk too much? Did I sound too Southern? Southern enough? Was I supposed to eat the broccoli florets or were they a garnish? Should I email the hostess and explain that thing I said about not liking cats because what if she used to have a cat to which she was particularly attached and it was hit by a car driven by some jackass compassionless writer who boorishly eats garnishes and says whatever pops into her head at cocktail parties?

As a writer by profession and a hermit by nature, I've come to accept the fact that I am socially retarded. I try to mitigate by not drinking alcohol at parties or lunches. (So much healthier to drink alone late at night with only dogs to witness my pathetique.) I don't try to fake a more Midwestern accent or try to fake anything, in fact. I lack the organizational skills and short term memory to be successfully full of crap. I have to be myself, for better or worse, and then I have to go home, taking comfort in the simple fact that no one cares about me.

Truly, they don't. It's liberating. My presence in that office, restaurant, or professionally lit pool area has nothing to do with amusing anecdotes about my kids and everything to do with the market value of my skill. As long as I don't fall in the pool or set a parking valet on fire, I'll be remembered only by those who asked for my card -- and only a few of those will remember why they asked for it. And only a few of those will feel the need to follow up. (My follow up consists of "thank yous" only. It's important to me to avoid any whiff of hanger on; I let them come to me.) One lesson I'm still learning: when to go and when to stay home.

I was at a seriously star-studded party in LA last week, and I didn't fall in the pool or set anyone on fire, but on my way home, I felt rotten about it. I'm not going to any more of these things. In my post-mortem obsessing, I decided I probably did more networking than was kosher at a purely social function, and now I'm worried that the hugs and happiness with which I left my client after the final read-through of her manuscript are tainted by this image of some opportunist clumsily mingling in a halter dress and heels.

A few years back, I did a book with the mom of Tour de France wunderkind Lance Armstrong, and as luck would have it, Gary and I were in France that July, spelunking around the art caves in Dordogne. We caught up with le Tour in Besancon and watched Lance blaze the final time trial. His mom had hooked us up with passes to the VIP section in Paris, where she was going to be chilling with Sheryl Crow, Robin Williams, and that set.

As we stood in line at the airport, preparing to check in for our flight from Geneve to Paris, Gary and I looked at each other and just went...nah. We'd had so much fun on this trip, we didn't want it to end.

"We should go," said Gary. "I mean...if you really need to be there. For the book."

"I got everything I needed at the time trial," I shrugged. "There really isn't any reason for me to be there other than..." I didn't know how to complete the sentence. "Networking" maybe, but isn't that just a nice word for "sucking up"?

So instead of drinking champagne with the rich and famous in Paris, we spent the afternoon at an outdoor bar in Geneve, drinking beer and watching the final leg of le Tour on a Jumbotron, stupid in love after twenty-some years together, talking, laughing, totally enjoying each other. One of the reasons I hated that perfectly lovely party (full of perfectly nice people) last week was that it took place on Gary's birthday, and I spent the whole night wishing I was home in Houston, drinking beer and playing Scrabble with my old man.

Hollywood's a nice place to visit, but as the saying goes, I wouldn't want to live there. The tricky part is knowing when to leave.

Joni's Sunday sermon: God loved me enough to lock me in a bathroom in the Hollywood Hills.

My life has been excessively strange lately. In the course of working my memoir guru mojo for a truly delightful client, I’ve made the acquaintance of an important (iconic, really) writer/producer who has for some odd reason decided that we should be friends. He’s one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. Generous, kind, whipsaw funny, scary smart. (He’s also endearingly geeky. Friday night, while the fireworks were going on, he wanted to tell us about the little known history of the Declaration of Independence, and tragically, I was geeky enough to want to hear it.)

I enjoy conversing with him, but his famousness is weird. Distracting. Intimidating. Every time I say his name, I’m reminded that he’s this intimidating famous guy, so I’ve taken to calling him “Studs Mulligan”.

Friday, since the 4th was my client's only day off this millennium, Mulligan hosted the final read-through of the manuscript at his place – an ultra-moderne but not grossly huge house on a hill overlooking LA. It’s the squarest, hippest, whitest, cleanest house I’ve ever been in. The sparse bachelor pad furnishings are complimented with typical mega-star knick-knacks, my favorite being a Gibson Les Paul autographed by Amie Mann.

My client, her assistant, my daughter (who’s been working as my assistant), and I arrived at noon to find the kitchen stocked with beverages, treats, and a deli-catered lunch spread. I distributed manuscripts, and I’d had one printed for Mulligan, but he respectfully withdrew to his office, wanting to give my client the time and space she needed to speak freely.

During the first six hours of reading and notes, he joined us only when invited to hear one particular chapter or another. (He’s filled in major gaps in my understanding of the world of television, and I wanted him to reality check me on those chapters.) My client, a boundless ball of energy, wanted to blaze on to the end, and even though I’d been working without stop since 4 AM in order to have the manuscripts ready, I was prepared to accommodate her. We both insisted we were good to go, but Mulligan gently insisted we take a 30 minute break. My client and the girls went for a swim. I went to a chaise in a shady corner and was asleep about three seconds later. At the end of the 30 minutes, my daughter woke me up, and I went to take a quick whiz before resuming the read-through.

The nearest of the five bathrooms in Mulligan’s house is just off the space age kitchen. I went in and locked the door, and for some reason found myself utterly unable to pee. Something about the square fixtures, the shininess of the hardware, or the whiteness of everything – I don’t know. It’s ridiculous. I just suddenly realized I was about to be bare-assed on the john in this incredibly famous dude’s house. I’d been drinking one water bottle after another. For six hours. I seriously needed to pee. I turned on the water in the Star Trekish sink to see if that would help.

No. Couldn’t do it.

I finally decided the best thing for me to do would be to go out and say that I’d forgotten something at my hotel, which was only five minutes away. I’d run over there, use the comfortably middle class facility, dash back to Mulligan’s, and continue the read-through without consuming another drop of liquid. I hitched up my jeans, rinsed my hands, and wiped them on my pants rather than touch the pristine white towels. But when I tried to open the door…

It wouldn’t open.

I clicked the little space age locky deal in and out a couple times. Bent down and gandered at the chrome knob. All I saw was my own sheepish face reflecting back at me. I squinted at the locking mechanism, which was like a skinny little pin. I pulled at it, and heard a small click. Breathing a sigh of relief, I turned the knob. The door did not open. The little lock pin, which probably cost more than my car, plinked onto the floor like a bullet casing.

“Shit!” said my reflection, and I agreed.

I heard my daughter’s voice in the kitchen, and I hissed her name a few times, but she drifted back out to the lanai, laughing with my client’s assistant. I jiggled and toggled and worked at the door knob for what seemed like a very long time. Then I started laughing, and then I realized there was no way I was going to make it back to my hotel to pee even if I were to get the dang door open and sprint for the rental car this very second.

The ridiculousness of it! For crying out loud.

I dropped trou, took care of whiz biz, washed my hands, and dried them on the towel hospitably offered for that purpose. I decided that before I swallowed what was left of my dignity and started yelling for help, I'd give the door knob one more try. Click. The door opened as easy as you please.

Back out on the lanai, I set the lock pin on the table next to Mulligan's hand.

“I broke your house,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

“Nah, it does that. You have to kinda go like crr-chk-a-chkk.” He demonstrated with sound effects. “Use the one off the music room.”

My client and I read on while he went out and fetched Italian food. I read to the table while everyone else ate, then Mulligan took a chapter while I ate. I resumed reading to the end, which left my client in tears.

With the task of the book behind me (other than a few small clean-up items), I’m thinking ahead to my next project. When Mulligan suggested I should “come over to the dark side” and try screenwriting, I said, “That’s just not my world. I’m a book person.” But this morning, I woke up wondering why I’ve set such arbitrary (and stupid) boundaries in my life. Some destuctive little part of me is telling me I’m out of my league. It’s singing that old bluegrass song, “Don’t Git Above Your Raisin’”.

Getting locked in that bathroom was a blessing. It slapped a leash on me just as I was about to take flight, which would have been an idiotic waste of time in the middle of a hardworking day. And it would have reinforced the utterly wrong idea that I could not function on the most basic level in what was, for this day at least, my workplace. Nothing about Mulligan’s house – or Mulligan himself – could have possibly been more welcoming. The only thing telling me I didn’t belong there was my own insecurity. I don’t have time for that crap. (No pun intended.) I need to be able to function comfortably wherever my work is. That means being able to use a hole-in-the-ground outhouse in rural France or a Frank Lloyd Wright toiletron in Hollywood as unfussily as I use the loo off my own kitchen (which is, by the way, wallpapered with pages from my first novel).

I can’t describe what it meant to me to have someone understand and honor the emotional journey of this book. It’s possible that Mulligan was just trying to score points with my client, whom he adores with schoolboy blue devotion, but whatever his motives, the experience was wonderful for me. Finishing a book is a big deal. I’ve always felt a bit of an ache as I honor that alone. This is the first time the celebration was even close to being in balance with the enormity of the journey.

After I read the final chapter, Mulligan poured wine, raised a toast to my client and I, and gave us both roses. Then we all sat around the fire pit shooting the bull. Lively conversation covered everything from Cyrano de Bergerac to Barak Obama. Watching the far off fireworks, I felt that click that tells you you’re in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.

The world I belong in is writing. Everywhere it takes me is home.

The gestalt of ghostwriting

Kibitzing back and forth with a writer friend last night, I was trying to explain the mindset that makes it possible for me to write books for which other people receive credit. I've had many such conversations over the years, and responses vary from "How do I get a gig like that?" to "Whore! Whore of the Medicis!" but a common theme seems to be a disbelief that I could possibly be okay with it. And a bit of an eye-roll when I, a lowly ghostwriter, aspire to high artistic ideals.

For many (if not all) writers, a major part of the thrill of being published is seeing one's name on the cover of a book, the author photo in the newspaper, a big poster announcing the table signing at Barnes & Noble. For my first few books, I was totally on that bus. Loved getting out there and talking to people and meeting booksellers and doing interviews. It was trippy seeing my picture in the London Daily Mail, I won't deny it.

But that buzz wore off for me after my last novel. I took a beating from critics and personal insults and threats from readers. Thrill gone. I just felt exposed and vulnerable, and my response to that was to pull into the safe, solid turtle shell of my home office. There I discovered that I could really write a lot more when my focus was inward instead of outward. And I liked it.

Colleen has shared a lot of thoughts on self-promotion in this space over the last year, the ups and downs, the balance we all seek, but one thing that can be agreed on -- it takes a lot of time and energy. If you're building a career as a novelist, that is time and energy well spent. But what if you could draw a Get Out of PR Free! card? What if you could have the money without the fame? For me, that is a quick and easy trade. The people who matter (editors and agents who will hopefully bring me the next interesting project) know that I did this work. I'm building a solid rep in this biz as someone who has talent, meets deadlines, and gets along with folks who lead complicated lives and are not always super easy to get along with.

My friend told me last night -- and he was right -- that I am a crappy reporter. Because I believe the best willingly and the worst reluctantly. A memoir is a totally different art form that has only a skiff of a whiff in common with a biography or autobiography. It's about reflection and introspection, not a yada yada yada recitation of details. Does this make it less worthy as a piece of art? Maybe. Depends on who you're asking. But it's a form I love because it's so human and soft. And forgiving. I'd rather see a naked body painted by Matisse as opposed to a naked body depicted on nakedchicks.com, and I frankly don't think the Matisse is less factually accurate.

The key to being a successful ghostwriter is a complete suspension of vanity that enables one to genuinely love the project and the client for exactly what it is and who they are. If you go into it as a way to hobnob with the rich and famous, you're doomed, because they can smell that a mile off. If you go into it for the money, you're doomed, because it's unsteady, seldom worth the aggravation, and leads you into temptation; greed makes you to take projects you're not right for, which is the road to ruin. So enter into it for the sake of a book -- or stay home.

According to the dictionary:

gestalt
Pronunciation: \gə-ˈstält, -ˈshtält, -ˈstȯlt, -ˈshtȯlt
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural ge·stalts also ge·stalt·en
Etymology: German, literally, shape, form
Date: 1922
: a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts

There are several things people hate/disrespect about what I do, and it's fruitless for me to try to defend one facet or another because I see the gestalt -- the integrated unit that is something different from the sum of its parts. Is it cool for one person to take credit for another person's work? No, generally speaking, it isn't. Do I love it that "authors" like Britney Spears rake in advances with twice as many zeros as most of the talented, hardworking wordsmiths I know? No, I hate that. Am I holding this story to the high journalistic standards I expect from a biography? Hell, no.

The reality of a ghosted memoir is not the sum of those parts; it's the integrated project that brings peace, healing, and closure to the client, prosperity to the writer, and a pleasant experience to the hungry reader.

(Above: two halves of Matisse's "The Red Room" painted in 1908.)