Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself; everybody else is already taken.”
I was recently commissioned to ghostwrite someone’s memoir. I’d done a lot of ghostwriting in my life but not for years. I’d been focusing on my own novel, my weekly blog and being a writing coach. I thought I was through writing for other people. In fact, I turned down a number of projects that didn’t appeal to me, but I said yes to this one.
There were a number of reasons that I had agreed to do it. It had arrived smoothly. No agents. No negotiations. No fighting and disagreements. No muss. No fuss. I liked the woman who was hiring me. I could tell during our initial conversation that she was kind and honest and she had a good story. She wasn’t defensive. She was open and positive. She listened well, she had a story that was inspirational, and it was a good payday. The way was clear, a good sign I was doing the right thing.
Ironically, a few weeks earlier, I’d been talking with a friend about ghostwriting. “When I think back about the books I’ve done over the years” I said, “there are more than a dozen but I can’t remember the steps involved. And still, I managed to finish them.” A legendary diva who was planning to do a new book called me recently and she said, “How did we do that?” I wasn’t the only one who didn’t remember.
When I began my current job, (I’m still working on it), I created a list of questions. We went into our Zoom session and as I asked the questions one by one, I established a rhythm. It all came back to me. I was able to read my client’s energy, one of the most important skills for a ghostwriter, and before I knew it, an hour and a half had gone by.
It takes a particular type of person to be a ghostwriter. It isn’t for everybody. You have to be willing to work your butt off, meet a deadline as short as a mini-skirt, and when it’s through, you have to walk away. No credit. No thank yous. Just someone claiming your work as their own. When I started my career, the client would feebly thank me by mentioning my name among a long list of people on her acknowledgement page. As my career progressed, I got my name on the cover as a “With” or an “And,” but it didn’t go as planned. A certain celebrity was promoting her book on late night television. I was excited to have my name broadcast on the air but when the camera zoomed in on the cover, she had pasted white tape over my
name. I was non-existent. It had been a particularly difficult job. The client hadn’t been forthcoming and I’d had to dig in and pull the material out of her. That made it feel like a personal insult, but the coda to this insult was when I called her agent.
“My contract stipulated that my name would appear on the cover,” I said.
“Don’t make trouble,” he said. “She’s on a book tour and she doesn’t need any distractions.”
I had been downgraded to “a distraction.” There have been so many insults along the way. A publisher printed my name in grey letters against a black background. Another one made my name so tiny, you needed a microscope to read it. And for one of my projects, my name was omitted from the bestseller lists. These things made me wonder if I wanted to continue this work. Was I willing to be hidden away? Was I capable of holding no grudges for bad behavior? Was it worth it? I decided that it was. I liked meeting extraordinary people and getting paid to do what I liked best – writing. I liked learning from people who were outstanding on their fields and I liked making a good living.
For me, the hardest and the most important part of ghostwriting is holding onto your own identity while you take on someone else’s. I was once heading home from a client’s estate after a long day of interviews and her voice was reeling around in my head. If I got into a fatal car accident, I wondered, whose life would flash before me? Who was I? A girl singer from Detroit? A member of the White House Press Corps? Was I in an Afghani prison for drug running? A basketball hero? An alcoholic rock star? A female morning show host who met most everyone in the world? A married royal who got caught in the tabloids on an island with a young lover?
Over the years, I have become all of these things but I’ve learned to come back to me. A friend asked me if I envied my clients’ wealth and fame. My answer was unequivocally “No.” I used to think that being someone else, someone who was celebrated on stage and screen, would be better and more exiting than being me. But I quickly discovered that I was wrong, that the life I created for myself is the one I want to lead. Who wants to wear makeup every time they go outside? Who wants their marriages and divorces splattered all over the rumor mill. It seems like walking a mile in someone else’s Louboutin shoes would be great, but it’s better to slide into your own slippers, pet the cat and watch some mindless TV. Trying to be like someone else doesn’t end well. If you’re running away from yourself, when you stop running, you’ll be staring into your own eyes.
In the words of
Jon Kabat-Zinn: Wherever you go, there you are.”
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