Confessions of a Ghostwriter
Confessions of a Ghostwriter
On Super Thursday, as a record number of books are published, an RLF writer reflects that a significant number may have been written by a ghost...
Today is “Super Thursday” when, in the UK, the highest number of books are published annually. This year, 2024, will be a record, with 1,900 books due to be published. But how many of those books are written by the writer named on the front cover? An increasingly high proportion of books, particularly by celebrities, are now being “ghostwritten”. An RLF Fellow and ghostwriter describes what it’s like to give up one’s authorial ego and become a writerly apparition…
There are days when ghostwriting feels like an art form, and also the purest, most altruistic abnegation of self. And there are days — sometimes nights — when it feels like whoring.
You may be employed by a big commercial imprint. You may be writing a self-published business memoir which won't come near a Waterstones in a month of Super Thursdays. But you're only ever the hired help.
It's not about you. More than anything, in fact, it's a lesson in getting over yourself, obliterating ego, and simply delivering — at pace, to deadline, with professional distance and charm in spades.
Sworn to secrecy
Have you ever lain down in the middle of nowhere to gaze up at a clear starry sky, only to be pitched into a vortex of doubt and insignificance by the scale of the universe, the sheer number of heavenly bodies out there, most of which you can't even see? A similar head-spin starts up if you let yourself wonder exactly how many books, particularly bestsellers, were actually created by the person whose name is on the cover. Musicians, sportspeople, politicians and the occasional royal do sometimes admit these days to a smaller-fonted co-author, but this apparent openness may simply mask just how many ghostwriters are still busily, perhaps resentfully, churning out less honestly published memoirs or franchise thrillers. Acknowledged or not, as a ghost, you have to be able to keep a secret or two.
The secrecy — if your name's not on the cover you're very likely to have an NDA clause in your contract — cuts both way. You can write the kind of books you're perhaps unlikely to read yourself by choice without any danger of undermining or complicating your 'brand', if you have one. You're saved the nerves, time and unpaid performances involved in any publicity campaign. It's disconcerting at first to hear people talking about ‘their’ books as their own when you probably know every sentence and pace change more intimately than they do. Then you remind yourself again:
“…It's a lesson in getting over yourself, obliterating ego, and simply delivering — at pace, to deadline, with professional distance and charm in spades.”
The ghostly voice
Ghostwriting should be a vanishing act. Your words are not your words. Yet they're not quite the book-cover author's either. Although the work is all about voice, the ghostwriter's ambition isn't as simple as capturing authenticity: an apparently authentic voice is something you have to create, just as a novelist has to find the voice of a fictional character. The genuine voice of a real person who communicates brilliantly in real life, in soundbites, speeches, and short interviews, may not work at all for an extended written narrative. This is particularly true if their first language isn't English.
It surprised me at first to read enthusiastic Goodreads reviews praising an international bestseller I'd written because it made readers feel the 'author' they knew on TikTok was speaking to them. Having laboriously transcribed weeks' worth of interviews, amounting to hours and hours of audio material, the significant gap between the way my subject-author spoke in real life and the way I made her speak on the page seemed obvious to me. And yet. . . and yet. . . clearly, I had made that written voice convincing. Weeks and weeks of living with her real voice in my head, a necessary and total immersion in sound and identity, had allowed something honest and truthful to emerge, even though I knew it was a construction.
A ghostly story
In fact, in many ways, ghostwriting is closer to producing fiction than non-fiction. It gives you the best of both worlds: you can ask your characters questions. You don't have to make it all up. It's much more collaborative than solitary novel-writing. But you still need to craft a narrative arc. You need atmosphere. You need to notice things your subject-author hasn't, and slip in details they may come to believe they remember. Writing historical novels, as I also do, similarly involves a fine balance between flow and the authenticity of period and place, as well as that delicate juggle of factual accuracy and storytelling.
To get beyond the solidification of well-rehearsed anecdote, there's a huge amount of invisible research around the edges. You measure up the memories of your 'author' against archival documentation, and test their truths, as well as tempting those truths out. You might be delighted with a well-earned nugget, a revelation someone admits while sitting on their sofa at home, after you've won their trust, and shared enough jokes and memories. Yet when they read it back in cold print, even if you've written that story or offhand comment almost word for word, they can still strike it out. Many celebrities have made a career out of strength. They don't like to see their vulnerabilities exposed. They don't understand that that weakness is what makes them human, easier to identify with, lovable.
A financial safety-net
I never set out to be a ghostwriter, and I hope it will only ever be a sideline, a financial security blanket as my own 'critically acclaimed' books have so far hardly been lucrative. A lucky ghost with a hard-nosed agent can get a deal which gives them a share of royalties. Most ghosting is on a fee-only basis, so the payment is exactly the same whether the book becomes a New York Times Top Ten or flops horrifically. But if your name isn't on the title page, you won't even get PLR (Public Lending Rights) or extra income from 'secondary' uses, like photocopying, which are collected and distributed by ALCS — the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society.
Getting started
The first book I 'ghosted' was a friend's memoir. On an hourly rate, paid out of his company's marketing budget, I put together a proposal and found an agent, who secured an excellent publisher. At the book launch at Daunts Books, I was introduced to a guest who bluntly said: "Oh you're the ghost." This took me aback. Was I? The 'author' had written the first drafty draft of every chapter, which I rewrote and extensively reshaped. He wasn't precious about his own words — he'd had a lifetime of creative collaboration — so our relationship was an easy one. But it had started with his written rather than spoken words and developed slowly enough for me to write one of my own novels alongside it.
After that, I ended up in a couple of 'beauty parades', put up by the same literary agency on an ad hoc basis. The first involved writing a sample chapter for an elderly Holocaust survivor from a fairly obscure Eastern European country, based on his amateur memoir, translated by a relative. I enjoyed the research, but clearly didn't hit quite the right note. Years later I learned that this 'author' had died too soon. The book was never published.
Keeping going
The next offer came completely out of the blue, during one of the Covid-19 lockdowns. I was out of contract, and struggling with a novel and a book proposal of my own, as well as library closures and a houseful of frustrated offspring. The interview went well and I was chosen to represent another Holocaust survivor.
I bought a lapel mic and a very long extension lead, opened the windows, and shouted my questions across the room to a tiny, bright-eyed old lady wrapped up in a blanket. Despite these precautions, both she and I were semi-felled by the Coronavirus after that first week. I then had about three months to research and write a first draft. This book had been commissioned quickly, without so much as a proposal document. I had completely free rein with structure and story. I shut myself up with my recordings and Covid-reddened itchy eyes, and wrote and wrote. This time I had to get to grips not just with the wildly varied history of the Holocaust, but also with the horrifying extent of Holocaust denial that exists in an algorithmic parallel universe I'd never directly encountered before.
Challenging projects
Before that book was published, the same commissioning editor presented me with a rescue job. Personal issues, or perhaps the unbridled narcissism of the celebrity 'author', had caused the original ghost to disappear without a trace, without having written a word, but taking with her the interviews she'd recorded on Zoom. I guessed this project would be a challenge. So it proved. But managing that person's personality was an education. I'm proud of not letting myself be beaten. I remained on excellent terms with everyone involved in the project.
The bottom line
I tell myself I have a bottom line. Oh no, I would never ghost fiction for a celebrity! Well, certainly not children's fiction. How unethical. And then suddenly a chance meeting... a phone call. . . an unexpected email. I've never heard of this person or this place before, but something about the idea is too intriguing to turn down flat. The timing's right. I could make this work, if they want me. Oh... oh... they're nibbling? They want to read one of my other books? There could be travel? Maybe there is no bottom line.
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