Ghostwriting is all about encouraging people to take what is inside them – their thoughts, ideas, and stories – and get them “out there” so they can enrich or illuminate the lives of others. But many people don’t believe that what’s inside them is worth anything. It is part of my job to convince them that this is not so. We all have something to contribute. I know this is true because my mother showed me it was. When I was about 4 years old, I wrote a poem about a bumblebee that my mother thought was the best poem any child had ever written. She copied it out in her prettiest handwriting, using a pen with thick black ink, and adding many flourishes and curlicues. She used her best white stationary, not the newsprint I originally wrote it on. And then she illustrated it with her own fabulous drawings (I thought they were fabulous because her bumblebees really looked like bees, not dots, and her flower like flowers, not smudges.) She hung this creation inside a real frame, on the livi...