Photo by Dead Cat , via Flickr I have lived many lives in addition to my own. I have heard the best stories, been influenced by the best wisdom, learned life-giving lessons, laughed at the best jokes, had the most fascinating experiences. This is because I have been a ghost for nearly twenty years, and have ghostwritten, rewritten, or developmentally edited over seventy books. (This doesn’t count the books I’ve written for me.) I tell my clients their life stories and the lessons they’ve learned are vitally important, that what they feel, think, say, and do matters. To them, their families, their communities, to history itself. I am now taking my own advice by writing a new book, tentatively titled My Life As a Ghost, which shares what I’ve learned from all these lives that are not my own. I can’t share the actual stories because they don’t belong to me, but what I’ve learned does. A ghost has to learn to think like someone else, even others radically different than her. Like...

I’ve been a ghostwriter for 17 years now. It’s been a wild wonderful ride filled with the most amazing stories. I was privileged to hear them first and help get them out into the world. I’ve blogged before about the joys of ghostwriting and how much it has given me. I’ve been fairly successful. I’ve been involved – mostly as a ghostwriter, sometimes as a content editor – in nearly 50 books in those 17 years. In 2015 alone, I ghostwrote and finished three books (the last one just last month). But there are some downsides to ghostwriting. The biggest one is that I’ve been so busy writing other people’s stories that I’ve neglected my own. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t written my own books – I have. Over ten of them, in fact – fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Nearly all of them published before 2010. But for the last five years or so, as my ghostwriting business has grown, my own work has languished in drawers or my laptop file folders. I had and have plenty of great id...

In September of 2011, I wrote a post for the Blood RedPencil about my 20-year haiku practice and how it fueled me, nurtured me, inspired me, and helped me realize that I am indeed an artist. Last year I wrote a series of blog posts for the excellent and helpful website Assisted Self Publishing  about my trek through the wilds of self-publishing with the result of this 20-year haiku practice. The following is an excerpt from one of those posts:   Twenty years ago I did not know that a haiku practice would change my life, but it did. At the time I worked for the marketing department of a large technology company, and tried to pacify my lifelong dreams of being a “real” writer by writing “on the side.” One evening while on a business trip and staying in a nondescript hotel, I was reading a book about writing I had brought from home. I have since forgotten the author and title of this book; the only thing I remember was that the author suggested would-be writers might try...

This post was first published here on July 17, 2010. Telling stories to a ghostwriter is like talking to a therapist or a bartender. When they get comfortable with me, my clients tell me all sorts of intimate stuff,often answering questions I never even asked. Then later they may have second thoughts, and wish they hadn’t. Here’s a frustration with working with non-writers.  Writers know that writing exposes you and makes you vulnerable. The more real and truthful you are, the more vulnerable and exposed – and the more compelling to your readers.  But non-writers don’t know that. They get their manuscript back from the ghostwriter they hired to write their story, read their words and thoughts and feelings on paper, and get scared.  They want to hedge and soften, and turn specifics into generalities, so they will feel safer. Of course, this will kill the writing.  Readers respond to gut-level stuff; that is what makes stories compelling and readable.  But i...

As a ghostwriter, I have written many memoirs for non-writers. Memoir is my favorite genre to ghostwrite, perhaps because of my educational background in history. I love exploring how our individual lives affect, or are affected by, the events and trends of “big history.” It’s a cliché that “every life has a story” but it is a cliché because it is true. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these stories are never told. How many of us wish they had an ancestor’s story, told in their own words? Sometimes all we know is a tantalizing tidbit: a tiny piece of an ancestor’s story that raises as many questions as it answers. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, we think, to know the hopes, dreams, wishes and fears of Great-Great-Grandma as she bounced over the plains in a covered wagon? Wouldn’t it be cool to know what Great-Great Uncle Joe was thinking while he robbed that bank? And why did Great-great-great Grandpa leave Scotland in such a hurry? Well, if they didn’t write their thoughts down, ...

For twenty years one of my writing disciplines has been to write one haiku poem per day. I write them whether I feel like it or not, mostly in the mornings while looking out my home office window. The view outside is always and never the same, reflecting the inward view of my own psyche. Twenty years ago I did not know this haiku practice would change my life, but it did. At the time I worked for the marketing department of a large technology company, and tried to pacify my lifelong dream of being a “real” writer by writing “on the side.” One evening while on a business trip and staying in a nondescript hotel, I was reading a book about writing I had brought from home. I have since forgotten the author and title of this book; the only thing I remember was that the author suggested would-be writers might try to write just one thing per day, no matter how small. Even a three-line haiku would be enough, the author said, to prove you were a real writer, a real artist. “I can d...

To be successful, ghostwriters must be more than good writers. We also have to be part therapist, part marketer, part bartender, and part busybody. Ghostwriters have to ask a lot of questions. During my association with a client, I ask hundreds of questions, many of which arise spontaneously during conversation. But I have some standard questions that I almost always begin with. Here are ten of them: 1. Who are your desired readers? (Do NOT let them get away with answering “everyone.”) Be as specific as possible. 2. What do you want your readers to learn? Why don’t they know this already? Why would they want to learn it? Why wouldn’t they want to learn it? 3. How do you want your reader to feel? What emotions do you want to awaken, and why is it important to you that they feel this? 4. What is the purpose of this book? Make money? Educate? Entertain? Save the world? 5. What are the hot buttons, hot topics, or controversies in your subject? If there is a lot ...

I enjoy interviewing my ghostwriting clients to gather the material necessary to write their books. People say such surprising things, especially if you tell them, as I do, to be a blabbermouth and just say anything that pops into their heads. I tell them not to worry about wasting my time, I want to hear it all, even the dumb off-topic stuff. Interviews can go off in unforeseen directions, and some of the most colorful passages in books come from off-the-cuff remarks or the spontaneous, “Oh, that reminds me of a story …” Nevertheless, I can’t just ask general, open-ended questions like “What was that like?” or “Describe your grandmother.” Because most people are not blabbermouths and general questions often give them a bad case of brain freeze. I will get answers like, “It was nice,” or “She was sweet.” I must ask specific questions designed to elicit details. For instance, if I’m ghostwriting a memoir, I don’t ask my client the question, “What were you doing in 1985?” (Cou...

People don’t want to admit they hire ghostwriters. There is a stigma attached to using a ghostwriter, and we might as well admit it. Why should this be? Whether they can write well or not, people think they should be able to write. We are funny about writing. We think everyone can write – after all, we learned how in first grade! Reading and writing are a big part of what makes us “civilized.” One of the correlating lessons that we learned, at the tender age of four or five, was that we must do our own work. Never, ever, copy someone else. We are all capable of learning the skill of writing. A first grader can write a simple story. A fourth grader can write a book report. By the time we get to high school, we have learned to research and do reports on complex subjects. We have learned grammar and spelling and sentence construction. We have read some great works of Literature. We know what makes a book good. So now we are adults and should be able to write a book...

Photo credit: Google Images Writers are often introverts. We dislike getting “out there.” Many of us are happiest (and feel safest) holed up in our snug workrooms, hunched over our laptops typing away. We are so much more impressive when we write than when we talk! This goes double for ghostwriters. After all, the whole point of being a ghost is that you are invisible. Once in a while you may rattle a chain or two, or emit a low howl in the dead of night, but that’s about it. Despite the popular conception of what a ghost does, you must never say Boo! – it gives away your presence. Of course, introversion is a poor marketing strategy. It doesn’t work for authors, and it won’t work for ghostwriters either. No matter how much you enjoy the background shadows, you have to get “out there” and let people look at and listen to you – and you must try to be informative, compelling, inspirational, or at the very least, nice. People simply won’t hire you otherwise. And they won’t r...

Google Images Last month I wrote about why it’s a good idea to write for your readers , not just for yourself. But how do you know who your readers will be? To figure out who is most likely to be interested in your subject, and who you want to be interested in your subject, you need to ask yourself some categorization questions. These questions can range from general and broad to as detailed as you want. The two broadest and most general are: 1.   Gender.   Are your readers more likely to be men or women? There have been many things written about the differences in gender communication styles. 2.   Age.   Are your readers likely to be under thirty? Over fifty? Mid-life, seniors, Generation X, Y, or Z?   But don’t stop there. The more detailed you make the description of your ideal or most likely readers, the better you will be able to grab their attention. Here are some other categorizations you might want to ask yourself about the readers w...

I love my job. I know how lucky this makes me, and in this season of thanksgiving I give thanks to my clients who let me into their hearts and minds, innermost dreams and desires, and tell me wonderful stories that entertain me and better still, always teach me something. I am so grateful to be a ghostwriter. I’ve been a ghost for almost fifteen years and in that time I’ve ghostwritten more than forty non-fiction books and memoirs – some of them short, some long, some for women, some for men, some for people in their 80s, some for folks as young as 25. My clients are from all over the US; from widely disparate occupations; from many ethnicities and cultures. I’m a middle-aged white American woman from Seattle, but because when you ghostwrite you move into someone else’s head, my heart and mind have grown and I am no longer just what I appear to be on the outside. I have walked that proverbial mile in my clients’ moccasins, and I have been stretched to fit their shoes. I have hear...

A very long time ago, around 40 BCE or so, the Roman poet Horace wrote this in his Ars Poetica: “Your opening shows great promise, and yet flashy purple patches.” It has been said that from this sentence by Horace comes the phrase “purple prose.” I used this phrase in a speech I gave a few months ago, and was surprised when many in my audience did not know what I meant. This may be because they were would-be authors, not editors. Editors are on the lookout for purple prose – so they can kill it. Purple prose means a word, phrase, sentence, or any written passage that is too ornate, too flowery, too over-the-top – in fact, too anything. Purple prose draws attention to itself and away from the story. The most obvious kind of purple prose is romantic or erotic prose. It’s the easiest place to go over the top. Perhaps because the words we give to sexuality are usually either too clinical or too crude. If you say “He patted her mammary glands” it’s not very exciting, but “He grab...

As a ghostwriter, I often help people write their memoirs or their family histories. In this role I get to ask a lot of questions, but preparing my interviews can be challenging because research of personal stories cannot be done by searching through public information on the Internet. You have to go fishing in the personal pond, which can be murky or shallow. One of the ways I fish for interesting and colorful details about my memoir clients’ lives is to ask about how the people in their story talked. Like most writers, I love words, so one of my favorite research topics is on the language used by various generations. Knowing the popular slang of an era adds color and authenticity to a memoir (or fiction.) Asking questions of the client about how their parents talked, or how they talked when young, is a good way to bring back buried memories. One thing that defines a generation is their way of speaking, especially the slang developed in their teens and twenties. These words often re...

Who do you admire? Who we choose to call our heroes may have great power over our lives, whether we know them personally or not. Do you remember who your first writer hero was? I do. Ever since I can remember I wanted to be a writer. I wrote plays, poems, stories, and even a newsletter for my family, which I subjected them to every Sunday night at the dinner table during the year I was nine. It seemed a miracle to me that color, excitement and action could bloom out of black lines on white paper. I still remember the Christmas when I was nine or ten and given Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. I fell in love with its heroine, Jo March. She, too, wanted to be a writer, and her “scribbling” meant more to her than anything else. She wasn’t one of those namby-pamby, retiring, “good” girls – no, she was exciting, bold, tumultuous, a passionate rebel who had problems with anger and who rebelled against female restrictions. I strongly identified with her. Jo March was my first author men...

Many years ago, I read a book that reawakened my young dreams of becoming a writer. That book was Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. One of Goldberg’s most effective tools is to “keep your hand moving” when you are in the throes of the creative process. In other words, do not edit as you write. In fact, don’t even think. To people like me who live in our heads too much, this was transformative advice. A few years later, I read another book that transformed my life. It was The Artist's Way , by Julia Cameron. One of Cameron’s most effective tools is “morning pages” in which you start off each morning with a “brain dump” that consists of transferring whatever stuff is moving around your head onto 3 pages of paper, in longhand. I married Goldberg’s and Cameron’s advice, and for about twenty years I have been doing morning pages by keeping my hand moving. I use cheap notebooks and an expensive fountain pen. (Tools are important. Writing is a physical process.) By ...

Photo credit: AussieGall (CC) As writers we are warned to beware of clichés, and we try hard to keep them out of our writing. Often the only time to use them, and then sparingly, is to give an idea of a person’s style through dialogue. However as a ghostwriter, I’ve found clichés to be a useful avenue into my clients’ psyches. Many people use clichés unconsciously when they speak. For instance, I ghostwrote a book about business success for a businesswoman who used a lot of clichés. One of her favorites was “we were just like peas in a pod.” For anyone she liked, she’d describe their relationship as being two peas in a pod. It started with her grandmother, who she credited for establishing her values that she used in business. I therefore asked many questions about Grandma – what she looked like, how she talked, and so on. Turns out Grandma liked jewelry, and so did my client. Grandma liked to entertain people, and so did my client. Grandma was basically a wild old rip, lots of f...

Some days I don’t feel like writing, and I start to wonder why I bother. I mean, what’s the point? In a couple of billion years we’ll all be space dust anyway, right? When these thoughts grab me I try to remember that writing puts me in touch with my “Creator Spirit,” even though I can’t define what that is. Writing makes me whole, even when I write badly. (Even bad stuff needs a creator.) When I don’t write, I’m not whole or in touch. It’s a survival thing for me. Yes, I know how grandiose this sounds. Who am I to think I am an artist whose work will last for centuries? I’m not Shakespeare or Michelangelo. I should pay attention to my little life and let all those high-falutin’ (my grandfather’s term) ideas go. I don’t have time to write, anyway. Some days there are pressing concerns in my life that get in my way. (You know, like laundry or tweezing my eyebrows.) About twenty years ago, I read a book about writing. Unfortunately I can’t remember the book’s name or author. (I rea...