YA author Scott Westerfeld offers another perspective on ghostwriting

Getting a lot of email today because of an article I wrote on the Art and Economy of Ghostwriting, which is being featured on the AOL welcome page. For those interested in a different take, here's an excellent article, "On Ghostwriting" by Scott Westerfeld, author of the popular YA Uglies and Leviathan series.

"I am a ghost writer, a literary doppleganger," says Westerfeld. "I write books that other people take credit for. People more famous than I, or busier, or who simply can't be trusted with a pen." He goes on to outline ghost parameters and protocol and addresses some of the pressing questions that haunt the field: "What are the implications of such duplicity? Is ghost-writing a case of false advertising? Is it simply bad manners, like bringing take-out to a potluck supper?"

Since Westerfeld ghosted fiction back when he was doing this sort of work, his perspective is a bit different from mine. As a celeb memoir ghost, I do for my clients what the Ghost of Christmas Past does in “A Christmas Carol” — I take them by the hand, lead them past their life experiences from the perspective of an observer, help them find peace with the characters who people their memories, and then excavate a language that expresses how they feel about it all. These stories are not mine to tell, so I’ve never felt that my words were being taken from me.

Quoth Westerfeld:

Reading reviews of one's ghosted works is an equally ambivalent experience. One is partially immunized from negative comments, but any high praise is half pleasure, half pain. For the ghost, the only real satisfaction comes from the phrase "competent prose." Some ghosts I know are haunted by their lost kudos...

Not me. I don’t writhe even a little when the book gets a great review, and I prefer that the reviews not mention me, because I want to do what a good ghost does: disappear. I can’t say how I’d feel about ghosting fiction, but I can say that the invisibility has become addictive. I never fight for cover credit; on a recent project, the client was the one who insisted my name be on the cover. She didn’t want people to think she was pretending to have written the book.

Ghosting forced me to examine the essence of why I write. I love living a creative life — and actually making a good living. I love the endlessly entertaining puzzle play of setting words in rows. I genuinely love listening to people -- my clients, airplane seatmates, random people on park benches and subways; I've never met a human being who was not fascinating and beautiful in some unique way. I love learning daily through research on everything from theatre history to bicycle racing to monoclonal antibody therapy. Public applause is a really pale reward compared to all that. I have a lot of love in my life; I’m not missing anything if strangers don’t love me.

Can you spot the ghostwriter? (Hopefully not)

I went to a party for my current memoir client in LA a few weeks ago, and it was like somebody shook the famous people tree. I wanted to be there because my client has become my friend, but I felt terribly out of my element. People were asked to leave cameras in the car at this party, and every time one of the official photographer types told me to "c'mon, get in there" I purposely stepped away. I feel like a parade float next to those skinny little LA chicks, and I'm not a photogenic person in any case, so I generally avoid having my picture taken. (Gary persists in snapping shots of me unawares, so I invariably have this "fwah?" look on my face in all our family pictures.) Anyway, I'm not paparazzi fodder like most of the folks who were there that night, so I was pretty surprised to see myself lurking in the background of a photo in last week's People magazine.

I'm not in the habit of reading People, I must admit (and I'm not at all ashamed of this); Gary actually brought the photo to my attention. He picked the magazine up from the seat of an airplane and noticed the picture of my client. He did a double-take. Though my face isn't really visible in the picture, I was wearing a chunky amber necklace Gary gave me about fifteen years ago, and the familiar shape caught his eye.

This is a good metaphor for my role as a ghostwriter, actually. The client must be very much in the foreground. My task is to capture her voice, give words to her ideas, and express her opinions. Only someone who knows me extremely well should be able to tell that it's me in the background, and even then it should require a double-take. I've found that the Stanislavsky method acting I studied in college comes in very handy. I'm essentially doing the same thing my client does when she plays a character on TV or in a movie. I just do it on paper.

I've broken the task of ghostwriting a memoir down to three essential elements:

Content: What does the client want to say in her book? What's her story and what does it mean? This emerges through hours (and hours and hours) of conversation. The most important thing I do as a ghostwriter is listen. I've learned the hard way that trying to impose my idea of what the client should want to say is a huge waste of time. It ultimately won't work. If it's not her message, it will never ring true.

Structure: As I learn about the message and story, I start to see a sort of bell curve -- the story arc -- and chapters sort of fall out onto the table. I'm required to provide a detailed outline to the publisher, so I'm looking for that skeleton from the very start.

Voice: This is where I have to completely recede into the wallpaper. I've been blessed with a few really fabulous Southern women whose unique, strong voices were easy to embrace on paper. I run into rough patches when my spiritual or political beliefs don't jibe with a client's, but walking miles in their shoes has been a good exercise in understanding.

The real magic trick of ghostwriting is achieving invisibility. If a ghost project reads like a Joni Rodgers book, I've failed my task. But hopefully the quality of the finished project will be enough to make editors and agents (the ones who could potentially bring me the next terrific project) do a double-take.

(Indidentally, when this photo was taken, I was chatting with the multi-talented Camryn Manheim, who told me she wrote her own hilarious memoir, Wake Up, I'm Fat!, without a ghost. What a fabulous, funny, scary smart dame. I wish you could see her instead of me!)

Gofightwin Cheno! (My homegirl is up for an Emmy!)

Gotta shout out (woooot!) to my friend, Kristin Chenoweth, who received an Emmy nomination this morning for the supporting role of Olive Snook in the wonderfully quirky dramedy series Pushing Daisies. Having spent the last few months working with Kristin on her forthcoming memoir, A Little Bit Wicked (Simon & Schuster, April 2009), I can tell you there's not a sweeter soul in Hollywood. Kristin's an amazing talent (girlfriend's got a Theatre BA and MFA in Opera Performance) and the hardest working woman I know. While you're waiting for the book, here's a little Snook:

The gestalt of ghostwriting

Kibitzing back and forth with a writer friend last night, I was trying to explain the mindset that makes it possible for me to write books for which other people receive credit. I've had many such conversations over the years, and responses vary from "How do I get a gig like that?" to "Whore! Whore of the Medicis!" but a common theme seems to be a disbelief that I could possibly be okay with it. And a bit of an eye-roll when I, a lowly ghostwriter, aspire to high artistic ideals.

For many (if not all) writers, a major part of the thrill of being published is seeing one's name on the cover of a book, the author photo in the newspaper, a big poster announcing the table signing at Barnes & Noble. For my first few books, I was totally on that bus. Loved getting out there and talking to people and meeting booksellers and doing interviews. It was trippy seeing my picture in the London Daily Mail, I won't deny it.

But that buzz wore off for me after my last novel. I took a beating from critics and personal insults and threats from readers. Thrill gone. I just felt exposed and vulnerable, and my response to that was to pull into the safe, solid turtle shell of my home office. There I discovered that I could really write a lot more when my focus was inward instead of outward. And I liked it.

Colleen has shared a lot of thoughts on self-promotion in this space over the last year, the ups and downs, the balance we all seek, but one thing that can be agreed on -- it takes a lot of time and energy. If you're building a career as a novelist, that is time and energy well spent. But what if you could draw a Get Out of PR Free! card? What if you could have the money without the fame? For me, that is a quick and easy trade. The people who matter (editors and agents who will hopefully bring me the next interesting project) know that I did this work. I'm building a solid rep in this biz as someone who has talent, meets deadlines, and gets along with folks who lead complicated lives and are not always super easy to get along with.

My friend told me last night -- and he was right -- that I am a crappy reporter. Because I believe the best willingly and the worst reluctantly. A memoir is a totally different art form that has only a skiff of a whiff in common with a biography or autobiography. It's about reflection and introspection, not a yada yada yada recitation of details. Does this make it less worthy as a piece of art? Maybe. Depends on who you're asking. But it's a form I love because it's so human and soft. And forgiving. I'd rather see a naked body painted by Matisse as opposed to a naked body depicted on nakedchicks.com, and I frankly don't think the Matisse is less factually accurate.

The key to being a successful ghostwriter is a complete suspension of vanity that enables one to genuinely love the project and the client for exactly what it is and who they are. If you go into it as a way to hobnob with the rich and famous, you're doomed, because they can smell that a mile off. If you go into it for the money, you're doomed, because it's unsteady, seldom worth the aggravation, and leads you into temptation; greed makes you to take projects you're not right for, which is the road to ruin. So enter into it for the sake of a book -- or stay home.

According to the dictionary:

gestalt
Pronunciation: \gə-ˈstält, -ˈshtält, -ˈstȯlt, -ˈshtȯlt
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural ge·stalts also ge·stalt·en
Etymology: German, literally, shape, form
Date: 1922
: a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts

There are several things people hate/disrespect about what I do, and it's fruitless for me to try to defend one facet or another because I see the gestalt -- the integrated unit that is something different from the sum of its parts. Is it cool for one person to take credit for another person's work? No, generally speaking, it isn't. Do I love it that "authors" like Britney Spears rake in advances with twice as many zeros as most of the talented, hardworking wordsmiths I know? No, I hate that. Am I holding this story to the high journalistic standards I expect from a biography? Hell, no.

The reality of a ghosted memoir is not the sum of those parts; it's the integrated project that brings peace, healing, and closure to the client, prosperity to the writer, and a pleasant experience to the hungry reader.

(Above: two halves of Matisse's "The Red Room" painted in 1908.)