Ghostwriter Tell-All: Part 1 of 2

Click here for Part 2 of this Q&A

How did you become a ghostwriter?

I’ve worked as both a writer-for-hire and freelance magazine writer for 20 years. While still in college in Minnesota, I wrote public relations (PR) articles for the American Refugee Committee. Right out of college I wrote curriculum, newsletters, and presentations for non-profit organizations. Though I wasn’t aware of that at the time, this experience in the non-profit world beautifully prepared me for becoming a ghostwriter and coauthor.

As it turns out, PR and ghostwriting are very similar. Both involve writing for other people, in someone else’s voice. I researched the topic and wrote the material, someone else got the byline. But I got paid to practice my craft from a very young age! I also wrote about captivating topics that I was not qualified to write about otherwise.

In 2003, I moved to Montana, ready for a reinvention. I kept one foot in the writer-for-hire world, writing PR projects for private clients, while I began freelance writing, publishing my own work in regional magazines and newspapers. I knew I needed to grow my byline portfolio to get larger contracts—preferably book-length ghostwriting contracts.

I took a brief contract writing “marketing copy” at an agency that specialized in natural products. That agency disbanded, but one of the original owners continued to contract with me for years. I wrote scientific white papers, consumer education booklets, enormous educational websites, and (finally) a few non-fiction books and booklets. It was an amazing time, during which I bought medical dictionaries, and books on anatomy, nutritional healing, and herbalism. I learned how to decipher medical journal articles and translate the findings for the average lay reader. What a massive self-education process in order to keep up with my physician and naturopath authors!

That experience as a natural health ghostwriter gave me the traction I needed to begin ghostwriting books for private clients. Over the next ten years, I fine-tuned my system for book-craft, developing an efficient interviewing process and a coaching method to help the author quickly find their book’s internal structure.

I still serve doctors and integrative practitioners as a natural health ghostwriter, both on a private basis and through BrandHive, a health and wellness marketing agency in Salt Lake City. Today I also ghostwrite, coauthor, edit, and coach in historical fiction, survival memoir, and inspirational non-fiction. I love the diversity in my client list!

 

What advice can you give to an aspiring young ghostwriter?

I could not have business-planned most of the turning points in my career. But there are a few universal gleanings.

1. Get experience as a paid writer early on. Learn what it means to write for someone else. Even if you do not become a ghostwriter, even if your aim is to author and publish your own books, you will have to work with beta readers and editors at some point. Your experience working with an editorial team at a magazine, web-zine, newspaper, or marketing agency will make you a far better writer. You’ll learn how to take constructive critique and work on deadline. Those skills are crucial, and there’s no other way to acquire them except through writing as a member of a larger team.

2. Accept that you have to pay your dues. I attended countless writers’ workshops and literary center courses (especially at The Loft Literary Center and through Mary Carroll Moore) to acquire the narrative-writing skills that I didn’t learn through my Media/Journalism degree. My first few paid projects, I invoiced at about half the going rate. Roll up your sleeves and be ready to earn your keep in this way. I promise, it’s worth it! Of course, there is a difference between healthy dues-paying and getting exploited. There are entities that would love you to write for free forever. I’m not encouraging that. Be wise. Get your initial experience and portfolio-build in with low-pay opportunities. Then move on and start charging respectable fees.

3. Look for stepping stone projects. If you’ve only written non-fiction instructional pieces but wish you could work on narrative (memoir, fiction) projects, don’t cold-turkey quit your paying non-fiction projects. When you switch genres, you start a new cycle of “dues paying”. That means keeping one foot in projects that draw from your current strengths so you can continue to eat. Then look for that primo memoir project that you can complete at low-cost, over a longer timeline, on the side. This will become the portfolio piece you can share to secure a higher-paying memoir client later on.

 

Does ghostwriting pose any unique challenges that you wish you’d known about early on?

I wish I’d researched the legal contractual nuances much more thoroughly at the start. I’ve never had any legal challenges with a client, and my contract is now quite comprehensive, but it would have been easier to have a standardized contract drawn up by a publishing industry attorney for my very first project. I really re-invented the wheel to fine-tune my own contract over several years!

The only other challenge is one that you definitely don’t learn about in school: The challenge of keeping healthy emotional boundaries with writing clients. There again, I’ve never had any serious problems. I haven’t had a client come on to me or anything that extreme. But when you think of it, as a ghostwriter, you forge this really one-sided relationship with the author. It’s deeply intimate and revealing for them. They’re telling you everything they know about a topic that’s probably their greatest passion in life. Meanwhile, they really don’t know much about you at all, other than your professional qualifications.

There’s only one other professional encounter that looks like this: Therapy. And, oh boy, I am NOT trained as a therapist! I’ve had clients who, over time, began to rely on me as a sort of stand-in therapist, with our interviews wandering far from the book’s topic and heading into really intense emotional terrain. I’ve had to get honest in those moments and set firm boundaries.

Over the years, I learned to address this issue early on as an addendum to my contract. I educate the client about this issue with a little humor and panache at the very start of the relationship. That works like magic to keep it from becoming a challenge later on.