Collaborating with a professional ghostwriter is not just about word count. There are other values a ghostwriter brings to the partnership. Ideas. Narrative structure. A way to recognise elements for your story that you might have overlooked.
On a regular call with a client, we were chatting about his travel to Central America the prior week. As he told me about the eye opening experience he’d been through in Panama, an experience he was still trying to wrap his mind around, I realised that it made the perfect conclusion to the memoir. That experience brought together different threads of his stories and showed where his journey had brought him. Months later when we were ready for the final chapter, I went right back to that interview and used that as the foundation.
I’d worked with a marketing thought leader on several of his books. We worked together to structure the overall book, then I worked on the chapters to best bring across his ideas. Many of the I was able to take a concept he’d worked with for a year or longer and find a way to explain it to someone who, like myself, was not in the field I found analogies and comparisons to showcase his concepts. The books we collaborated on were translated into multiple languages.
I was working with an industry leader in her entrepreneurial memoir but the book wasn’t working for me. The concept just wasn’t coming together and I thought her purpose for writing this book didn’t hold together. As I worked through the notes from interviews certain points jumped out. There was something she mentioned in passing often. In the next call I told her the book wasn’t holding together but… I pinpointed the theme she didn’t realise she’d talked about so much. I suggested reworking the book around this concept and her eyes lit up.
I had worked for over eight months with a client on a book and we’d all but signed off on it when he realised – after the publisher pointed it out – that it was missing an introduction. I remembered a story he’d told me about trying to explain his field while making small talk in a shop. That one interaction stood out to me because the way the store clerk knew about the field, and was involved in it as well. Where there was usually a misunderstanding of that role. I wrote the introduction from memory and he filled in the details about the store. That one interaction crystallised the concept of the book and underscored why it was important at that moment.
This is why I see a ghostwriting project as a collaboration. It takes creative energy from both parties to create the work. The work is not just about pumping word count to publish a book. There’s a strong focus on the threads and ideas, and a knowledge of how to weave them together. When that aligns it’s magical.