The ghostwriting process is never the same for each client. There is much discovery to be done for each story, so much variation on what the goal of the book is, that any idea of a template would be pointless. Each time is returning to the blank page and navigating by the stars to find the book that we’re developing.

I was working on a client’s book – an entrepreneurial memoir – trying to find the story the author was telling. Through the whole process I had struggled to click with the type of book the author wanted to write. There was no clear thread. The concept, in my view, was too weak to carry a whole book. I pushed on.

After completing a rough draft with sections hanging together, I suggested we change focus. There was one aspect and value at the core of all the anecdotes and stories that the author hadn’t seemed to identify. When we refocused the book to be about that, with all the stories and lessons to support this key value, the book had a thread. It now had drive and direction.

There are times an author doesn’t know what type of story we will tell. Other times the plans change. The story, as it unravels in interviews, goes in another direction. A different story structure is required to tell it. Sometimes there are multiple stories, so we tell the strongest one.

The interviews open up so much. Some clients have described the process like therapy. The process of exploration and planning is exciting.

Each step is charting what we know, taking another step, and seeing if that works. The shape of the finished book might be somewhat clear or known when we start, but the finished refined details are different. That’s the adventure of each project.