The spectral world of the Ghost Writer
It was through a small ad in Mslexia four years ago, laid up on the sofa with a
broken leg and confined to the house, that I came across the opportunity to become a ghost. Story Terrace, a personal life writing service, had just started up and were looking for writers. I had no experience of ghost writing and little of freelance work, but I had written, and I had listened to many life stories at my father’s knee while he span tales at family gatherings. I had been obsessed with biography and memoir from a young age, those books of creative nonfiction lined the one bookshelf in our house, and loans from the local library provided the stack next to my bed. I was fascinated with lives I could only imagine, from Hollywood stars through the ‘misery’ memoir era of Frank McCourt, via the stories of Hellen Keller at school and Miriam Makeba and Nelson Mandela. Worlds beyond my experience that I could inhabit with a little imagination and empathy. The opportunity to write such stories was one I could not deny, especially as life writing was my bag. I’d taken ‘write what you know’ literally in vaguely autobiographical short stories. Four years and twenty-two books later, the life of a ghost has given me access to the most interesting lives, it’s improved my own creative practice and made me into a prolific teller of tales as well as providing me with a source of income.
The last year has seen an exponential rise in demand for my services. The pandemic stretch of time has seen our memories drift to the surface in our restless entrapment. We have longed for nostalgia, reflected on achievements and resilience in the face of adversity, or just had the time to explore family history in depth. The desire to articulate and share our personal histories has rarely been as strong. Leaving a book as a legacy makes yourself and your experience understood by the world through the effect of ink on paper.
‘It has made us think longer term, we have become more conscious about the mortality of older parents, and people want to buy this as a gift for ageing parents or to tell their own family history.’ Said Story Terrace founder Rutger Bruining.
Ghost writing may be a fast-growing genre, but it is by no means new. The spectre of the ghost has lingered as long as humans have put pen to paper. The top shelves of Waterstones are graced with hefty celebrity memoir tomes (It is a huge commercial market, celebrity biographies can command six figure sums as advances.) Fifty per cent of the top twenty non-fiction books are biography or memoir and open any celebrity book and you are likely to see the touch of a ghost, with some unlikely pairings, like Hunter Davies, the journalist and Beatles biographer, who wrote the memoirs of Wayne Rooney. I would argue there is no difference between the value of an interesting life well told in those top shelf biographies, and the story of an ordinary life. These days, a personal memoir is no longer the preserve of the rich and famous.
‘Every human being is worthy of attention and that the origins of every good and evil capability of the universe may be found by observing a single, even very humble, person and the turnings of his or her mind.’ Says the writer, George Saunders.
So why do it? Apart from the pleasure of acquiring an income from writing and the thrill of recording my profession on the census form as ‘writer’, ghosting gives me an opportunity to meet people and experience lives I would not otherwise have experienced. It gives me the personal contact I imagined when I read all those memoirs, now I am part of that process. In the past year, I may have been locked down, but I have travelled vicariously to Afghanistan, India, Israel, Greece and all over the UK. I have dealt with people with stories from the dramatic and traumatic, to the seemingly mundane, often with themes of overcoming adversity. One dealing with brain damage after a near fatal road traffic accident, another had a promising young life as a DJ in Majorca in the 1960’s, with George Best as a friend, until an early diagnosis of MS led her to seek pioneering treatment in Hungary that she brought back to England. I have had two clients with terminal illness, who wanted to leave some history of their lives before they became mothers and leave some words that might help their children to cope with their loss. I have written for those coping with the loss of a loved one in different cultures ways, for those living across continents, separated by discrimination, finally reunited after 40 years apart. I have written stories set in the landscape of the drugs and rave culture of 1990’s Goa, and custody ordeals between the UK and Israel, alongside nonagenarian reflections of long lives through the second world war and beyond.
Ghost writing as a term originated in the 1920’s with the American sports agent, Christy Walsh, who had a syndicate of 36 writers. There are package companies in the UK who operate in a similar way. Story Terrace have 600 writers and are looking for more. Book of My Life have 80 and I asked Alison Vina, their founder, what she looks for.
‘All our writers are published authors and/or journalists. Just as important as their writing experience is their personality. It’s essential that that they are kind, patient and empathetic interviewers. It’s exciting when a new writer brings a fresh approach to the work. I feel privileged to be able to offer ghostwriting work to writers who, in traditional areas like journalism, are so often undervalued these days.’
If you are thinking of entering the spectral world, Andrew Crofts, in his book, Ghostwriting, suggests approaching a person of interest directly. These days you may have to get past the agent gatekeeper. For us lesser mortals, I would start with a family member or friend, someone you know well. You can approach a package company or sign up to freelance newsletters for similar opportunities and build a relationship with your client.
‘The difference between a great writer and one who can ghost, is that a great writer can isolate themselves and write a beautiful novel, but our writers flex their style to find a clients voice, building an interactive relationship of trust to represent that person’s truth.’ Says Rutger.
There are many reasons why someone seeks another to tell their story, or that of a loved one (Book of My Life’s most unusual ghost request was to have someone write the story of their dog.) Time can be an issue. Keith Richards, Life, was written by James Fox, because Keith was busy with other things or for some clients their relationship with the spoken word is a fractured one. They wrestled with writing at school, or their expression became stilted by the language of technical and business documents at work. A ghost can help articulate their story.
How to do it. Be informed as you approach your subject. Read biography and memoir and make lists of questions you could imagine asking the subjects of those books. People reveal things to a ghost they have never revealed to anyone else, being a ghost has given me the opportunity to ask the questions I have always wanted to ask, satiating a curiosity (some would say nosiness). It is my responsibility to write all these stories well.
Make initial contact in a call or email and have an idea of what they are about (Google) and what they want from the book. Some clients have been bought the package as a gift and may be embarrassed or reluctant to recount their lives, most are extremely humble and may need to be drawn out to recognise and celebrate their achievements.
Once you have your subject, agree the approach to develop their voice. ‘Who are the readers of your book going to be? Why write this story now?’ For most people the audience is family, for some, it is a conviction that their story will be of wider interest and help others, and then it can become commercially published. Then begin your conversation, which can be through an initial questionnaire and interviews to paint a portrait in words. I write the client a chapter outline and a sample first chapter after our interviews, and before I write the full first draft. Some package companies use a software platform that writers, clients and editors have access to, most of the time it’s a lot of back and forth of word documents. I did have one client who posted me back the first draft, with handwritten sections cut and sellotaped over my paragraphs.
Agree the structure, it is a book, and should read like a novel. A memoir must show the essence of a person, rather than be a chronological biography, although some order of time helps. I often start with an inciting incident, an episode that has made them revalue life, or something that has triggered a long-held memory that they have re-lived. Then I loop back to illuminate any particularly tough, challenging, joyful, comic, or meaningful events which I try to get the client to recall in sensory terms (what the memoirist, Mary Karr, describes as ‘carnality’). A note on writing the truth, memory is a subjective thing. Mary Karr again.
‘You know the difference between a vague memory and a clear one.’ The language you use should reflect that.
In addition to the in person or remote interviews, (which I record, note and transcribe) I do research into historical detail, what was going on in the locality and the world at the time. Many older clients want the book to show their family how life has changed over the span of several generations. As Hilary Mantel said in her 2017 Reith lecture.
‘Now the romance is about deprivation, dislocation, about the distance covered between there and here: between, let’s say, where my great-grandmother was and where I am today.’ It should be a personal story, not just a catalogue of history so it helps to read around your theme, I used Esther Freud’s Hideous Kinky to help write the story of a client who had been on the hippy trail, A 1950’s Housewife for a client who was Bride of the Year in 1955, Skinning Out, a first-hand memoir of a Merchant Seaman for another client who shared the same profession, and memoirs of those who have gone through a similar experience, like Rachel Bland’s For Freddie for a client with a terminal condition. Use photographs, records and family letters. (Hunter Davies used Wayne Rooney’s school reports). A recent client had rediscovered his letters to his wife during the second world war which helped me reflect his voice. When family read the finished book it’s a compliment if they say it was like having their parent sitting in the same room, talking to them, or when a client reads a piece and tells you you’ve, ‘got it.’
Taking on the emotion of other lives and becoming a sounding post for someone else’s trauma can take its toll.
‘Watching someone scrutinise a painful memory in depth, is like lancing a boil.’ Says Mary Karr. Clients may find it therapeutic to talk about trauma, but ghosts are not therapists, and writing the story is not a replacement for therapy. Those who have experienced abuse, neglect, heartbreak and loss of a loved one, have to be handled sensitively. It requires resilience, empathy and never judgement, helped in some part by the fact the book is not your own, so you can step back and see its strengths and weaknesses. An intimacy can develop quickly between the ghost and subject and you carry these lives with you, but you have to leave them behind at the final draft and be kind to yourself and step away when you’ve written a particularly difficult piece.
As an uncredited ghost, sometimes you have to put aside your own literary pride. I took it personally when my emotive prose and references were cut in favour of a documentary style recount by a lifelong scientist who referred to his book as a ‘report.’ You may have differences of opinion and I have had to interpret writing and divert a subject’s attention if they want to include opinions that are inappropriate. Although the book is not published under your name, often a client will acknowledge your efforts. Sometimes there are differences. A client can react in an unexpected way when they see their story on paper, The beauty of working with a company, is that you have an editor who provides another level of support.
What will you earn? As a ghost in the big world of publishing, you could expect to be paid top of the range, but for the everyday, the rates are similar to those for copywriters, perhaps £40 per hour to start. For a 20,000-word book, you could expect to spend at least 50 hours on it, from first interview to final draft, three or four months, before it goes to book design and printing and often you will not be paid until the client is happy with the final draft. A package company will agree a project fee with you at the outset, which can be a decent percentage of what the client pays them. If you are working with an agent and a big name, you can agree a percentage of profits up front.
A spectral life can be rewarding and frustrating, but the commonality of life experience is inspirational. We see we are not alone, and our stories have worth and belonging. Ultimately, as a ghost, you are making a book that becomes part of that great catalogue of tales shared through human history. After all, we all have a story to tell, and it usually our own.
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