Ghost Writing
More than two years ago a friend of mine sent me the first fifty pages of a manuscript that he had “written” than chronicled his career and life. He had put together some 230 pages of thoughts and notes in somewhat random order and had hired a ghost writer to help him bring it all together as a book that would be both readable and compelling. He sent it to me to read for him and comment. He wasn’t feeling particularly good about it and wanted to get some guidance. He sent it to me because for over twenty years I had been writing trip stories of our motorcycle journeys and took great pleasure in finding new and artful ways to tell our story without having it all seem like one long and boring travelogue. He was also aware that I had written my mother’s biography after her death in 2017 and he was favorably impressed with that effort and storytelling. After one read of the fifty pages I called him to tell him I thought it was crap and sounded nothing like his very creative voice.
I gave him a sample of what I meant by restructuring and effectively rewriting those fifty pages and trying to make them sound more interesting and more like my friend. Both he and his wife loved the revised treatment and he asked me if I would consider writing his story. I happened to be in a slow career point just then and was spending a lot of time writing, so I agreed. If I had been asked why I did this at that time I would have said that he was such a good friend that I felt like helping him out. That was all true, but I also had an alter or motive in that I wondered if I had the right stuff to write someone else’s story, when it was not directly pertaining or involving me. Other people do that for a living every day, but I just didn’t know if it was something I was capable of sticking to and getting done. We discussed my “deal”, which was strictly a % of the profits deal with the full knowledge that I did not want to add to his costs of the project unless it bore fruit commercially. I knew enough about publishing to know that it was a long shot commercial project at best.
I set about the task by reading and organizing those 230 pages of scattered notes into something like a chronology that I could follow. It seemed like this was intended to be a biography so I thought it would be easiest and wisest to follow a more or less strict chronological path. The challenge would be to find a thread that I could start weaving into the fabric of the chronology that the reader would grab onto and want to keep on the ride to follow it through. I had taken a writing course or two by that time, but I would freely admit that most of what I was drawing on was all the writing I had done and the things that I perceived that people liked in my writing. And so I began. The balance of trepidation and fearlessness definitely leaned towards the former and so I started sending copy to my friend and his wife in an informal half-chapter sequence. One chapter at a time seemed too long and page-by-page was certainly too hard to track. I wanted feedback as I went so that I would not waste time and certainly so I would avoid doing any damage to our friendship by being too presumptuous or sarcastic about some of my friend’s life choices. And trust me, there was plenty to marvel and comment about in a number of ways, including sarcasm if I chose. Let’s just say that he had lived a “rich” life.
Both he and his wife seemed to like the treatment I was giving it and were quite complimentary as I went. I tried hard to discount the “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” aspect of their comments and I still felt that they were happy. The biggest point of contention was that they had wanted to include nice thoughts and comments about every person they ever encountered. Being the social animals that they were, that was a lot of people. I told them on many occasions hat we could not include everyone and we should only include people who advanced our plot or theme. This was admittedly hard for them. Harder still was any attempt I made to poke or prod at anyone they encountered that could have added dynamic tension to their lives. They were solidly non-offending people and while that makes for good friends and relationships, it doesn’t always help story building.
I worked through the project in about 2-3 months and must say that I found my friend’s life story both interesting and quite funny. Many a night I would lie in bed and read the latest chapter to my wife and we would marvel at and laugh at my friend’s high jinx, which were at times the stuff of great anecdotes to any audience. He had big things and done them in unorthodox ways. I would go so far as to say that he had a bit of the Forrest Gump about him in that he was a life symbol for much of our eras over the last fifty years. His career spanned food, entertainment, lifestyle, communications, leisure and many more areas that were all oriented towards consumer preferences. I was quite pleased with the final product and I sensed that my friend and his wife were as well. It was 400 pages long. Nevertheless, I was iffy at best about the prospects for commercial success, because that was so very illusive by nature. For some reason (certainly not for lack of personal wealth) they wanted it to be a commercial success, so they gave it to an “agent” to read and comment on. I too gave it to an agent I know.
My agent friend told me that she read perhaps 200 pages, which she said was a testament to how well written it was and what an interesting story it told. But then she lowered the boom by saying that the market was flooded with successful Baby Boomers that wanted to get their career stories into print. She said they were a dime a dozen and not compelling enough to attract a market unless you were Steve Jobs or someone equally important. My friend’s agent ended up being the wife of the man who had written the first 50 pages that I had slammed. Needless to say, she was not kind in her comments about my work. She identified 23 specific weaknesses or areas for improvement. I took up the gauntlet as thrown and rewrote all 400 pages to address each and every concern she had noted. The problem was that, having done this story twice now, I had completely lost objectivity and don’t even have a strong view which version I prefer.
My friend gave the revised copy to a commercial agent who came back with strong alternative suggestions that wanted to alter the book from a biography to a business advice book. The working title of the new version was to be something like, “Sometimes You Just Have to Say Fuck-It”. I’m not sure the couple that wanted to say nice things about all their lifelong friends was being well-served by this new approach. That book has sat on the shelf, unfinished and unpublished for more than two years now. What to do? What to do?
Last week another friend from the same motorcycle group sent me a manuscript written by his daughter, telling the tale of her journey through addiction and recovery and on to a successful entrepreneurial life helping other addicts find their path to recovery. After reading the first two chapters I told them (husband, wife and author daughter) that this was a great story that needed to be written in a more interesting and compelling manner. The rest goes exactly where you suspect it would. I have now rewritten three chapters and will work through the rest over the coming weeks. I have previously described myself as a moth to the flame. Well, there is no flame that burns brighter for me than a compelling story itching to be told, so here I go again on my own, going down the only road I seem to know (thank you again, Whitesnake). Does anyone know if the URL Ghost Writers-R-Us is taken?