Other than that, great article, reminds me somewhat of my experience with work-for-hire fiction, especially this: “An advantage of ghostliness: the almost right word comes considerably more quickly than the right word.”

I do for my clients what the Ghost of Christmas Past does in “A Christmas Carol” — I take them by the hand, lead them past their life experiences from the perspective of an observer, help them find peace with the characters who people their memories, and then excavate a language that expresses how they feel about it all.

These stories are not mine to tell, so I’ve never felt that my words were being taken from me. I don’t writhe even a little when the book gets a great review, and I prefer that the reviews not mention me, because I want to do what a good ghost does: disappear.

I can’t say how I’d feel about ghosting fiction, but I can say that the invisibility has become addictive; I now write fiction under a pen name even my parents don’t know. I never fight for cover credit; on a recent project, the client was the one who insisted my name be on the cover. She didn’t want people to think she was pretending to have written the book.

Ghosting forced me to examine the essence of why I write. I love living a creative life — and actually making a good living. I love the endlessly entertaining puzzle play of setting words in rows. I love learning daily through research on everything from theatre history to bicycle racing to monoclonal antibody therapy. Public applause is a really pale reward compared to all that. I have a lot of love in my life; I’m not missing anything if strangers don’t love me.

I write for the purely selfish reason that I love writing. Fame was never my objective. And candidly, I’ve hung around famous people enough to know that fame demands a price I’m not willing to pay. I’d rather be the piano player who does my thing and provides the ways and means for the jazz diva to do hers.

Here’s some thoughts on the process from my blog:
http://boxingoctopus.blogspot.com/2008/08/can-you-spot-ghostwriter-hopefully-not.html

Peace, love, and grooviness ~
jr

I don’t really have a problem with ghosting when it comes to well-known people’s autobiographies. Not everyone can write. But when it pertains to works of fiction or academic texts or non-fiction I become very very uneasy.

I have a friend who downpaid her house ghosting a supermodel’s autobiography. I was shocked, I tell you, to discover that the model wasn’t a prose genius, or any other kind actually. My friend then wrote her own mystery series about a ghostwriter’s loves and perils. So many of the celebrity and political memoirs are produced by ghosts, and surprising numbers of fiction series. Anytime you wonder how they can possibly produce that many titles each year, you’re probably right to wonder.

Please email the finished work for “Monday Morning Marine Corp Blues” by Tuesday.

You can have 25% of the royalties.

Ian

The publishers KNOW that book with “author name” will sell. So they just want a book. The author is still going to get some money from the deal, he/she just can’t or won’t write the book. So they all step back and hire someone that can write 20 novels a year and “everyone” is happy.

But as I said, I think it does shortchange some readers. I don’t like the dishonesty of it either, and nothing against the ghostwriter. He’s just a guy for hire, doing his job. It’s more on the author and publisher side where I find fault. They just want a book–any book and that isn’t very honest or fair. I also exclude celebrity novels, er, memoirs. I don’t think most of the public believes the celebrities write those so even if a name isn’t listed, I think the customer knows what they are buying.

With a known author and series, most customers are not buying what they think they are buying. If they are entertained, great. But the question remains: Would they have bought the book if they had known? Some would because they like the characters/world/story. Others? Not a chance.

As a writer (and not necessarily a good one) I don’t think I could ghostwrite. Not only would I hate doing all that work for someone else (for me that idea would be a step down in a bad way from working for a corporation) I know I couldn’t write fast enough. It’s quite possible that I could write with enough passion. Scott’s mention of being freed from the worry of it being perfect would apply. I know I stifle my creativity by second, third and sixth guessing. Rather enlightening to read that.

As a reader? Yes, we feel cheated by the whole ghostwriting thing. There are books I’ve read where I could only wonder–the style was different, or the whole tone. They might have been good books (or good enough) but the magic wasn’t there–the personality if you will. Of course, we’ll never know if it was an author having a bad write or a ghost that couldn’t quite take on the proper persona.

Good column. Enjoyed it