Ideas develop. They grow. They need time and pollination from other parts of life. Other works of art. Other things you read and listen. A spark when they sit next to something unexpected. The brain makes the connection. It’s not fast. At times, it’s frustratingly slow. But it’s fascinating and it’s the process. It is worth it.

The book you start writing is not the one you will have when you finish. It always changes. Writing a book is a process. It’s human and it’s collaborative. It needs you to give into ideas and see where they lead. Explore what stands up strong next to something else. Be curious about what needs to shift to another part of the book. The idea changes shapes. The book evolves.

As a film student/aspiring screenwriter, Jean-Luc Godard’s films were hugely important to me. I’m hardly the first aspiring screenwriter or film student to have been inspired by his works. There are plenty of terrible student films trying to pull off the same magic.

Beyond his films, it was his creativity at finding solutions to problems that has stuck with me.

I’ve been working on a novel through this year. It came to the point in writing this third draft where it was clear that one plot just wasn’t working. I cut it out.

Taking the information in your mind and putting it on the written page is not an easy process. Even people who have a passion for writing – that’s most writers – battle with it. That shouldn’t hold you back from writing a book because there are other ways.

When you read back through your manuscript – and you might even get a sense of these parts while writing – you will find passages or sequences that don’t hit the right note. The first step in this revision is ensuring the manuscript works overall. Only then can you tighten up the specific scenes.

Ghostwriting is an exercise in adaptation. My role is to adapt my client’s story or ideas to the written page. In some cases my clients have started with a wealth of material in their podcasts. The task, then, is to adapt hours of interviews and recordings to a book.

Here are three ways I’ve done that with recent clients.

There are times I work with an author who knows exactly what they want their book to be. In these cases it is usually a culmination of their work – many years of blogging and newsletters, years of public speaking or podcasts.

But there are times we discover the book on the way. Like an iceberg, there’s just part of it peering out of the water and we’ll discover the rest of it on the journey. Pull it into the light.

To cover a difficult topic in a way that’s as engaging as Moneyball, there must be a question that pulls us into the book. The chapters, or sequences, must develop from each other. Plunging head first into sabermetrics would have left most readers striking out part way through the first chapter. Instead, Lewis finds a way to open with the narrative to hook us, then deliver the ideas.

Recently I was interviewed about ghostwriting and the question came up again: how do I feel about not getting credit for writing?

I’m fine with it.