What’s So Bad about Being a Ghostwriter?

I just finished reading Jillian Cantor’s new novel, The Fiction Writer. It’s one of those entertaining novels that plays fast-and-loose with a classic tale by putting a contemporary spin on it. In this case, the book is based on Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. The plot revolves around a struggling novelist hired by “a reclusive megabillionaire twice named People’s Sexiest Man Alive, who wants her to write a book about his late grandmother’s surprising connection to Daphne du Maurier,” according to the book jacket.

Our protagonist, Olivia, has fallen on some hard knocks as a novelist. Cantor’s witty observations on what it’s like to try to make it in today’s publishing climate are spot on, like when she says Olivia’s second novel has received the “death knell” of a bad Kirkus review, or when Olivia is talking about writing and says, “If we do this for the rest of our lives, we might lose our minds.”

True enough. Cantor made me remember my first fiction writing class, decades ago, where the instructor (a novelist who was a literary success, but probably only sold a handful of copies) said, “If you think you want to be a writer, lie down with a cold cloth on your head and hope the feeling goes away.”

Writing fiction is more about persistence in the face of rejection than anything else, most days. I couldn’t agree more with Olivia (or Cantor) on that. But the one thing that bugged me about this novel was how Olivia felt “less than” as a ghostwriter despite being paid “fifty thousand up front” plus twenty percent of a publisher’s advance, sub-rights, and royalties. Nice work if you can get it, I say.

Yet, despite this solid wage, Olivia imagines her younger, more idealistic self saying, “Why would you want to be a ghostwriter, when you could be a real writer?” Even her too-good-to-be-true friend Noah, a fellow MFA program survivor, says, “Is this what you really want to be writing? The Olivia I used to know wrote because she loved it.”

Hold your snorting horses. What is so wrong with being a ghostwriter? How is that a lesser art form than being a novelist, especially when most literary novels sell fewer than 3000 copies? (And that’s being optimistic. Sure, commercial writers like Lisa Jewell, Dan Brown, and Stephen King sell in the millions, but how many of those writers are there?)

It’s tough to make a living as a fiction writer. Most of the novelists I know have other careers. Most teach. But others of us—the lucky ones, I think—get to make our living as writers by collaborating with other people who have stories to tell.

Contrary to Olivia’s point of view in The Fiction Writer, whether we writers-for-hire are being paid to write someone else’s memoir, inspirational self-help book, or popular science narrative, it takes a lot of passion, skill, and hard work to do it well. Ghostwriters need to gather information through interviews, which means asking the right questions. You also might be called upon to do research and fact-checking. Often, it’s the ghostwriter who collaborates with the author on the structure of the book as well as the right “voice,” and together you make a lot of editorial decisions about what goes and what stays in the content.

It’s up to the hired writer to help the author stick to a deadline if there is already a publishing deal in place. We also cheer on our authors through the hardscrabble work of collaborating on original content and shaping it for the intended audience. Then, once the book is in production, it is often the ghostwriter who ends up working with the editor on revisions.

I’ve been a ghostwriter now for nearly twenty years, and I have never stopped thinking of it as an honor to have people trust me with their stories. I will always love writing fiction—it’s an escape portal like no other--but collaborating on books with other people grants me new perspectives and stretches my craft in ways I couldn’t otherwise.

So, Olivia, maybe Noah was right when he urged you to quit. Not because your client was a rich creep, but because your clients deserve your passion and hard work in writing their stories--especially if they’re paying you fifty thousand up front.