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GHOSTWRING

The never-to-be-seen ghost behind the writing

Sometimes when I ghostwrite something, I get the feeling like I am being a surrogate mother. You’re probably asking, how can ghostwriting be ANYTHING like being a surrogate mother. Hang on a minute, here’s how ghostwriting works. Someone gets an idea, has got the money but can’t sit down and write anything, much less complete it, so he goes on the Internet and searches for a ghostwriter.

The job of this ghost writer is to take the idea, develop it into something and then hand it back to the ‘owner’ of the idea and the ghostwriter gets none of the credit…except for a stash of fresh cash in the bank. But other than that, it’s a pretty thankless job, being a ghostwriter.

If you’re a freelance writer, you would understand that every piece or article (right down to every dot and exclamation mark) is a work in progress until the final full stop, therefore, it requires resilience and persistence. Throughout the whole process (which I liken to being pregnant), you nurture the piece of article and you put every single bit of ghostwriting experience you have in every single bone in your body into that work. you piece it together carefully, edit, proof it and then rewrite parts of it that make absolutely no sense (hey, it’s like that!) at all and then go through it again.

And then when the ghostwriter is finally done – he/she sends it over to the ‘owner’ for approval, comments or whathaveyounots…and if everything’s a-okay, then the ghostwriter will have nothing to do with the baby…ever…again.

Sob. Sob.

The worst thing about being a ghost writer is that if you think the work was really awesome, you’re bound to feel the urge to do something like the following:-

1. Announce to the world that you’ve just come up with a complete masterpiece.
2. If it climbs up some best-seller’s list, you want to call your mother to tell her that your book made it to the top
3. You want to use the work as a sample or as part of your portfolio.

Of course, none of which the ghostwriter is allowed to do. Ghostwriters are bound to a pact in a sense that we are never to reveal ourselves and the role that we have played with the final product. We are to relinquish all rights and interest in the work once payment is made and the ghostwriting project is considered closed.

Worse yet, sometimes ghostwriters feel a little anxious about what the ‘owner’ did to the work. For instance, you can’t be calling the ‘client’ up and asking him/her what’s happening with the work! or he/she is letting it sit on his PC rotting away…that’s weeks or months of work there and you have no right to tell him that he/she has no right to let it rot.

Much like a surrogate mother.

But ghostwriting is a really interesting job and sometimes I like picking up such projects – for one very simple reason.

Every time I stat a ghostwriting mission, I become a master of something new! Like I wrote on cancer once and I can tell you what food groups to consume, to what proportions and what to avoid. I also ghostwrote many articles too – for instance, one of kayak-making (I was completely at a loss at the start) which developed into another newsletter ghostwriting project for furniture building. I also ghostwrote a book about crocheting which is right up my alley and also another about making an insane amount of money through an MLM business.

If I pick up a ghostwriting project on how to fix your own piano, I guess I would be a master at that topic too…which is interesting, don’t you think?

Ghostwriting is an interesting job…it pays the bills, although not regularly, but it’s interesting AND pays the bills…which is a fabulous combo. If you’re looking for someone to ghost write something for you, I could if I had the time. And if you want to ask me how much it would cost you for me to ghostwrite something for you, I would say ‘it depends’.

Depends on the work (book, newsletter, sales letter, articles…whatever), length (number of words), topic (difficult to walk-in-the-park) and stuff like that.

But to pull a figure out of thin air about ghostwriting, I would say a client would have to typically be prepared to pay anything between $200 and $5,000.

But that was two figures, wasn’t it? Ah well…

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