Inspired? Would you like to see your name on this website and your book up on those bookshop shelves? This is where we bring you a round up of writing tips, ideas and hints. | Ghost Writing |
| by Ellen Bashford It’s one of the hardest industries to crack. Horror stories of slush piles and manuscripts being used as an editor’s hamster bedding are every first time novelist’s nightmares. But the allure and romanticism of being a ‘writer’, filing your pages with the breath of your soul, pen in hand, ink on lip, mind whirling like Dumbledore’s Pensieve, all coffee shops and dark, sexy circles under your eyes is too enticing. Or perhaps you’re the cosmopolitan writer, haute couture on sleeve, champagne glass and glossy laptop, your cigarette smoke wafting gently from manicured, long fingers as your sharp, incriminating wit glitters with the hottest ‘story’. However, if your book launch consists of a sliver sequined spandex-y number with a host of faux feathers and a few of the men from 300, ends up on page 4 of a good few newspapers and you’re not invited, you may well be part of a gathering number of ghostwriters. Writers, who, for reasons various, agree to be the ‘voice’ of celebrities who wish to add to their arsenals of say; modeling, acting, launching perfume ranges, clothes lines, singing the odd number - being a bestseller too. The extended Tabloid, as well call it, has been going for longer than you might think. Socrates certainly should apportion some of his magnificence to Plato, for his ‘advice’, and in more recent history JFK’s Pulitzer-prize winning Profiles in Courage, although he may have denied it, was the penmanship of his speech writer, Ted Sorensen. Good old Ronal Regan, however, with hearty honesty, when asked about his memoir, replied ‘I hear it’s a terrific book. One of these day’s I’m going to read it myself.’ Perhaps the most controversial question of the moment, whether or not Shakespeare’s plays were Shakespeare’s plays, fits nicely into the current trend of ouiji boarding the ghostwriter. But the idea of exorcising one’s ghost once the book appears has a temping and not so successful history. Take 1994, the feisty Miss Naomi Campbell was asked by William Heinemann to put her name to a novel on the fashion industry. Caroline Upcher, an editor at Heinemann then wrote Swan, with little to no collaboration between the two. Originally, the whole purpose was very innocently to ‘buy the name’, but then Campbell was suddenly promoted as the author and Upcher was out. The illusion, however, was already broken and the book flopped, rejected and ridiculed by disappointed fans. Hit the 2000s though, and celebrity authors are everywhere. Having learned from the mistakes of their botoxed elders the term ‘collaboration’ is thrown about now, with author and ghost supposedly working in perfect harmony, the added effect being that no one really knows who wrote which bits, and in this age of fame crazed idolisation, you can count on people to choose the celeb. Take Kerry Katona, who likens her experience of ‘book writing’ to ‘creating the Sims’, having declared previously that she had never read her Autobiography. To anyone who has poured their life blood painstakingly, drop-by-drop into a novel, this assertion might be met with some criticism. On cue, in 2007, when Price outsold the entire booker-prize list with Crystal, the literary world went nuts, especially when her first autobiography Being Jordan was rejected by the larger publishing houses and bought on a whim by the independent publisher John Blake. It was only later, after sales hit the one million mark, that publishing houses blinked back the tears and restructured their idea of what actually constitutes a novel. It seems, that as long as the ghost is allowed to flutter into recognition when sought, the illusion of celebrities barking at a diamond encrusted Dictaphones from the spray tan booth remains credible. So why do they do it? Why do real writers give up the name tag for the back light? And do they care? The main argument, predictably, is the money. Why sell a few copies as another nobody writer when you can be the literary embodiment of Sharon Osbourne. But many ghostwriters have turned from previous writing careers, so perhaps there is another side to the job. Rebecca Farnworth, Jordan’s exclusive ghost, argues that the fun out-weights the lack of reward, ‘it’s very entertaining, I do get to ask her anything... and I mean anything’. Yet having just published her novel, Valentine, with the breezy line that ‘there won’t be a big launch, I won’t be wearing sequins or be carried off by four fit young men, but I can live with that?’ one wonders if she can. It looks a bit like having an incredibly rich, fabulous best friend whose shadow you can’t get out of. Yet many others agree that prying and following around their subjects is one hell of a good way to earn money. When Fanny Blake was sought to ghost for Bruce Oldfield, she was ‘intrigued and flattered’, and seemed to have a good time, ‘I’ve shopped, partied, eaten-out, stayed in hotels and even moved in to stop the author going awol so we could get through the interview’ and with a clientele of the likes of Kelly Homes, Kerry Katona and Charlotte Church, she’s got a point. Even the boys are in on it, Mark McCrum’s ghosted for Robbie Williams, adding that ‘you are in a privileged position, being the confidant of someone who has lived so excitingly or successfully. Your hero doesn’t have to come from inside your head, they’re in front of you...what novel writer has that luxury?’ Ghostwriters not only pose as literary craftsmen, but counsellors, friends, detectives and punch-bags. Frequently, celebrities snap, bellow, grab and slander their writers, if it’s a life of unpredictable excitement you’re looking for, there’s not much better. Blake’s experience ranges from ‘keeping cool’ while her celebrities’ dog had diarrhoea on her lap on a motorway, to partying with the A-listers. Dwight Yorke, according to Hunter Davies, was a nightmare, ‘often, after an hour, he’d say ‘Yourdoinmaf**kinheedin!’ Another writer had finally managed to get his client to sit down without his blackberry for ten minutes when the man received a call saying he was supposed to be in Glasgow for an appearance that afternoon, guess where he went. The stories get increasingly more ridiculous, and as any member of a celebrity entourage knows, there is no hell greater than standing near a murderous multi-millionaire. But with celebrities cramming their coiffeurs up the bestseller lists, ghosters are becoming less vetoed and more veet-ed as the real writer is increasingly allowed a nod of acknowledgement. Writing is ultimately a tough business, and ghosting not only allows with writer to gain the greens, it’s a great ego boost to have created a famous voice, though the ego’s one might work with are significantly larger and there is of course the ominous threat of turning into a man named Paul, who is said to have, after years of success, walked into Waterstone’s and in glancing at a table selling the top five best picks and realising he wrote them all, snapped, throwing them at customers screaming, ‘I wrote these! I wrote these!’ until he was removed by security. Perchance the most experienced and pro-ghoster, Andrew Croft, summaries his career as ‘a true, pure and noble craft somewhere between portraiture and the making of dramatised documentaries’, this sounds a little rose-tinted, but he’s the face of ghostwriting, if that’s possible. Alternatively, if you are really struggling with your debut novel, you could always buy a Stairmaster, loose the necessary weight, don your Chanel, get discovered, model, then perhaps act, whist launching a perfume and designing a fashion range, appear in the UK Top 40, then publish a fabulous and stunning novel, and in declaring that you have, in fact, solely given it life, your name will be immortalised in history. Mind you, good luck getting anyone to believe you. |
| Posted: 16/09/2010 12:56:11 |
Chick Lit > Writing Tips :: Ghost Writing