One of the reasons I love my job as a ghostwriter is that I get to learn so many unexpected things. Although there are times I wish I hadn’t learned them, because some stories are painful. Yet those are the ones which make me feel grateful – and lucky. Other stories are hilarious and make me laugh out loud, and they too engender gratitude. All stories – yes all of them – will teach me something. Stories are like that. Here are just seven of the many interesting tidbits I’ve learned from my clients. Since I only ghostwrite non-fiction, they must be true, right?   1.  Did you know that it is important to teach your child to always close the lid before they flush the toilet, because billions of small water drops full of nasty bacteria are released into the air with each flush? These water drops are capable of aerolizing twenty feet from the center of the flush, if they are not stopped by the toilet lid. So close that lid. Or at least rinse your toothbrush in peroxide be...

When she was around four, my granddaughter Ellie once stayed with me for a weekend while her parents were off gallivanting. What a great time we had! Ellie is into making up stories, so my grandmotherly ambitions went soaring – another writer in the family! She told me her stories while I scribbled them down. We wrote quite a few about Rapunzel, Tinkerbell, MuLan, and other heroines. (My favorite was the one in which Rapunzel went to San Francisco to buy a pretty dress and finally have her hair cut, leaving the Prince behind.) We also wrote a “round robin” story in which Ellie told a piece of a story, then I told a piece, then Ellie, then me, and so on. We called it “The Chicken Story” and here it is: Ellie: The chicken went to the park and he slid on a bumpy slide. Grandma: Then he fell off the slide and hit his head on the ground at the end of the slide. Ellie: Then he goes on a tire swing, and he fell off and he bumped his head again. Grandma: The chicken sai...

Awards come and go, and it pays to be cautious especially in these days of increased book publishing opportunities. Here is a new award I can personally vouch for having been a member of the Story Circle Network for years. ~ Dani Greer ~~~~~ May Sarton under her portrait By Paula Stallings Yost The winner of Story Circle Network's first annual Sarton Memoir Award will be announced at  Stories from the Heart , the biannual SCN National Memoir Conference, at the Wyndham Hotel in Austin, Texas, April 13-15, 2012.  The award is named in honor of May Sarton (1912-1995), the distinguished American poet, novelist, and author of twelve memoirs and journals. Readers have found Sarton 's work to be inspiring, moving, and thought-provoking. While widely acclaimed for her fiction and poetry, Sarton ’s best and most enduring work may lie in her journals. In these honest, probing accounts of her solitary life, she deals with such issues as aging, isolation, solitude, friendship, ...

The ability to tell a good story can come in handy for more than publication. Just take it from my friend, Tracy Farr. Life has a way of making perfect sense until you wake up and find you are 20 minutes late for work and there's no way on Earth you're going to tell the boss you overslept, so you come up with some ridiculous lie about how you came upon a nasty accident, and since you were the only one around who knew the number to 911, you were obligated to stay and render whatever aid you could give, to the best of your ability. The horrific wreck, which was 20 miles south of the Middle of Nowhere, was burning when you came upon it, bodies were strewn across the county road like dropped matchsticks, and the smell of gas fumes meant an explosion was imminent. With only moments to spare, you moved the helpless victims away from the wreckage, beat the fire down with your jacket, performed CPR on three victims at the same time, set the broken leg of a middle-aged woman who kept sc...

Jenny attached the manuscript to an email and breathed a sigh of relief. Her eyes felt heavy and her back ached, but she was used to the discomfort of working long hours. Usually she enjoyed her job, but every once in a while a writer came along who challenged and frustrated her. Rose Felman's writing was a nightmare of incorrect tense usage and bad punctuation, but her dialog was sharp, the plotting fast-paced and filled with tension and the characters were so real that it was hard not to get involved in the story. Jenny was always tired when she finished editing a Rose Felman book. The excitement she felt after reading a Felman novel lingered, and she opened her instant messenger. She was sure to get a reply soon. Rose Felman hated seeing her work marked by the "editor's pencil." She fought to keep her manuscripts intact and unedited, arguing over every little correction. Most of the publisher's editors hated working on a Felman manuscript; hated the shouting an...