Oscar Wilde said, \u201cBe\u00a0yourself; everybody else is already taken.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was recently commissioned\u00a0to ghostwrite someone\u2019s memoir. I\u2019d done a lot of ghostwriting in my life but not\u00a0for years. I\u2019d been focusing on my own novel, my weekly blog and being a\u00a0writing coach. I thought I was through writing for other people. In fact, I turned\u00a0down a number of projects that didn\u2019t appeal to me, but I said yes to this one.<\/p>\n
There were a\u00a0number of reasons that I had agreed to do it. It had arrived smoothly. No\u00a0agents. No negotiations. No fighting and disagreements. No muss. No fuss. I\u00a0liked the woman who was hiring me. I could tell during our initial conversation\u00a0that she was kind and honest and she had a good story. She wasn\u2019t defensive. She\u00a0was open and positive. She listened well, she had a story that was inspirational,\u00a0and it was a good payday. The way was clear, a good sign I was doing the right\u00a0thing.<\/p>\n
Ironically, a few\u00a0weeks earlier, I\u2019d been talking with a friend about ghostwriting. \u201cWhen I think\u00a0back about the books I\u2019ve done over the years\u201d I said, \u201cthere are more than a\u00a0dozen but I can\u2019t remember the steps involved. And still, I managed to finish\u00a0them.\u201d A legendary diva who was planning to do a new book called me recently\u00a0and she said, \u201cHow did we do that?\u201d I wasn\u2019t the only one who didn\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n
When I began my\u00a0current job, (I\u2019m still working on it), I created a list of questions. We went\u00a0into our Zoom session and as I asked the questions one by one, I established a\u00a0rhythm. It all came back to me. I was able to read my client\u2019s energy, one of\u00a0the most important skills for a ghostwriter, and before I knew it, an hour and\u00a0a half had gone by.<\/p>\n
It takes a\u00a0particular type of person to be a ghostwriter. It isn\u2019t for everybody. You have\u00a0to be willing to work your butt off, meet a deadline as short as a mini-skirt, and\u00a0when it\u2019s through, you have to walk away. No credit. No thank yous. Just\u00a0someone claiming your work as their own. When I started my career, the client\u00a0would feebly thank me by mentioning my name among a long list of people on her acknowledgement\u00a0page. As my career progressed, I got my name on the cover as a \u201cWith\u201d or an\u00a0\u201cAnd,\u201d but it didn\u2019t go as planned. A certain celebrity was promoting her book\u00a0on late night television. I was excited to have my name broadcast on the air\u00a0but 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\u2019t\u00a0been forthcoming and I\u2019d had to dig in and pull the material out of her. That\u00a0made it feel like a personal insult, but the coda to this insult was when I\u00a0called her agent.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy contract\u00a0stipulated that my name would appear on the cover,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t make\u00a0trouble,\u201d he said. \u201cShe\u2019s on a book tour and she doesn\u2019t need any\u00a0distractions.\u201d<\/p>\n
I had been downgraded\u00a0to \u201ca distraction.\u201d There have been so many insults along the way. A publisher printed\u00a0my name in grey letters against a black background. Another one made my name so\u00a0tiny, you needed a microscope to read it. And for one of my projects, my name was\u00a0omitted from the bestseller lists. These things made me wonder if I wanted to\u00a0continue this work. Was I willing to be hidden away? Was I capable of holding\u00a0no grudges for bad behavior? Was it worth it? I decided that it was. I liked meeting\u00a0extraordinary people and getting paid to do what I liked best \u2013 writing. I\u00a0liked learning from people who were \u00a0outstanding on their fields and I liked making a good living.<\/p>\n
For me, the hardest and the most important part of\u00a0ghostwriting is holding onto your own identity while you take on someone\u00a0else\u2019s. I was once heading home from a client\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n
Over the years, I\u00a0have become all of these things but I\u2019ve learned to come back to me. A\u00a0 friend asked me if I envied my clients\u2019 wealth and fame. My answer was unequivocally \u201cNo.\u201d 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\u2019s Louboutin shoes would be great, but it\u2019s better to slide into your own slippers, pet the cat and watch some mindless TV. Trying to be like someone else doesn\u2019t end well. If you\u2019re running away from yourself, when you stop running, you\u2019ll be staring into your own eyes.<\/p>\n
In the words of
Jon Kabat-Zinn: Wherever you go, there you are.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oscar Wilde said, \u201cBe\u00a0yourself; everybody else is already taken.\u201d I was recently commissioned\u00a0to ghostwrite someone\u2019s memoir. I\u2019d done a lot of ghostwriting in my life but not\u00a0for years. I\u2019d been focusing on my own novel, my weekly blog and being a\u00a0writing coach. I thought I was through writing for other people. In fact, I turned\u00a0down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2737,"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-2738","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\/2738","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=2738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2739,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738\/revisions\/2739"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}