Don’t Do It<\/p>\n
Tackling a ghostwriting project is daunting. Most of my\u00a0clients are A-list celebrities and during the first meeting, while they think they\u2019re
auditioning me, I\u2019m auditioning them. Do they play well with other children? Will\u00a0they listen to me? Stars are not very good at that. Will they tell the truth\u00a0about themselves? They’re not very good at that either.<\/p>\n
When the client hires me and we start the in-person\u00a0interviews, I leave each meeting with a load of tapes. I get home and I stare
at them with dread. I have to transcribe them which is tedious and takes\u00a0forever and I can\u2019t farm them out. Besides the fact that the information is\u00a0confidential and sensitive, I need to study the client\u2019s speech patterns,\u00a0favorite phrases and the rhythm of their sentences so I can write in their\u00a0voice. It\u2019s a skill all its own.<\/p>\n
Gathering the highlights of their lives goes along smoothly \u2013\u00a0until I begin to probe them for more sensitive material. The stuff that draws
in the reader. The celeb is afraid of this, of the blowback and shaming on\u00a0social media, but without the nitty gritty, the book will die on the vine. One\u00a0client insisted on using the word, \u201cSecrets\u201d in her title but I couldn\u2019t get\u00a0her to reveal any. Another one got an instant migraine when I asked about her\u00a0parent\u2019s divorce. The meeting was over \u2013 which brings me to next important ghostwriting\u00a0skill \u2013 reading the room and deciding how much the client can handle on any
given day. What should I ask or not ask? It all depends on what they\u2019re\u00a0maneuvering in their lives. Maybe she\u2019s shut down because she got a bad review,\u00a0caught her husband cheating with the nanny and she\u2019s suffering a public\u00a0divorce. Maybe she\u2019s open because she fell in love or got an award. These are\u00a0important considerations for me.<\/p>\n
With so many people to please, like the agent, the manager, the
PR people, the publishing editor and the celebrity herself, when I finish one\u00a0of these books, I am totally spent. In the days following the submission, I try\u00a0to release the anxiety I\u2019ve been carrying for months. It hangs on like a bad\u00a0habit as I go from writing every day to not doing anything in particular except\u00a0figuring out how to do nothing in particular. \u00a0<\/p>\n
This is the point of this blog. \u201cNot doing\u201d is something I\u00a0need for my mental health. When I had just finished one of these trials by\u00a0fire, I was on the phone with my mother, telling her how exhausted I was and\u00a0how strange my life felt now that I was finished. \u201cI have to take some quiet\u00a0time,\u201d I told her, \u201dbut I forgot how to do nothing. I need to work on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three days later, a letter from my mother arrived in the\u00a0mail. She wrote, \u201cI make sure I do at least two unpleasant tasks a day to keep
up my discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wondered if writing that letter was one of her unpleasant\u00a0tasks, but what she had said was no surprise. My mother was my mother, the same\u00a0person she had always been. The idea of \u201cnot doing\u201d was a foreign concept to\u00a0her. On the rare occasion that she and my father went on vacation, if they were\u00a0sunbathing or having a cocktail by the pool, they called themselves \u201clazy\u00a0bums.\u201d My father never took a nap without announcing that he was going into the\u00a0bedroom to read the newspaper. My mother loved to read novels more than\u00a0anything in the world but she wouldn’t allow herself to do it during the day
when there were more important things \u201cto do.\u201d I\u2019m not sure what was so\u00a0important, but relaxing, napping, sitting down with a good book or having a\u00a0chat with a friend were not on her To-do list.<\/p>\n
It seems that with each generation, the following one rebels\u00a0and does the exact opposite. That\u2019s certainly true for me. Instead of a To-do\u00a0list, I have a \u201cDon\u2019t-do list.\u201d Here’s a sample of what it looks like:<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t underestimate the benefits of not doing anything. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Don’t ever see yourself as a lazy bum.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t judge yourself for resting.<\/p>\n
Don’t manufacture unpleasant tasks.<\/p>\n
Don’t fill up every hour of every day with \u201cstuff\u201d to do.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not suggesting that you procrastinate or not do things\u00a0that have to be done. Quite the opposite. I wrote a memoir some years back for\u00a0Wendy Walker, executive producer of the Larry King Show for seventeen years.\u00a0She got up at 5 AM to tune into the Eastern news cycle and she worked all day\u00a0with forty staff members across the \u00a0U.S., contacting newsworthy people and\u00a0producing shows. She got about two thousand emails a day (I\u2019m not kidding) and\u00a0she answered each one as it arrived.<\/p>\n
I do the same with a fraction of her number of emails, but when\u00a0I\u2019m through, I surrender to my Don\u2019t-do list. I don’t rush around and chase my tail.\u00a0I don\u2019t judge myself for sitting on my bed for hours, guilt-free. My bedroom is\u00a0my safe space where I can do or not do whatever I want. I knit, I read, I play\u00a0games on my phone and I watch TV. I don\u2019t have to answer the phone. There are\u00a0no rules and nobody gets to be there unless they get a specific invitation from
me. Any cat, however, is welcome.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve discovered that \u201cnot doing\u201d is a great way to get answers\u00a0to difficult questions. When you clear your mind and stop trying to remember\u00a0something, when you don’t do anything in particular, the very thing you\u2019re\u00a0seeking just might waft in. Here are a few more things on my \u201cDon’t-do list:<\/p>\n
Don’t doubt yourself.<\/p>\n
Don’t underestimate yourself.<\/p>\n
Don’t judge how you look.<\/p>\n
Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. That never ends well.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t waste time with people who don’t appreciate you.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t be afraid to be afraid.<\/p>\n
When my students ask me how to get motivated to write, I tell\u00a0them, \u201cDon\u2019t search for inspiration. Begin to write and let inspiration find
you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Don’t Do It Tackling a ghostwriting project is daunting. Most of my\u00a0clients are A-list celebrities and during the first meeting, while they think they\u2019reauditioning me, I\u2019m auditioning them. Do they play well with other children? Will\u00a0they listen to me? Stars are not very good at that. Will they tell the truth\u00a0about themselves? They’re not very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2409,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408\/revisions\/2409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}