A packed schedule. Dyslexia. Stage fright. The feeling that you never really had a way with words.
All sorts of circumstances have the potential to get in your way when you have a meaningful, fascinating, or harrowing story that’s screaming to get told. Too many would-be memoir writers lay their pens down before they ever really get started and give up — reluctantly accepting that their stories will never fully be told.
Others forge ahead, clueless as to what they’re doing, turning their moving or inspirational story into an incoherent word salad that can’t reach readers’ hearts, and resorting to self-publishing when major publishing houses won’t touch their manuscripts.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Do you have a story to tell, but you don’t know how? A skilled ghostwriter can come to your rescue.
Some might regard “ghosts” as shadowy figures wading through murky waters, enabling their clients to pass the stories they tell off as their own — and think of authors who hire ghostwriters as cheaters.
The truth is far more interesting.
- Ghostwriters and Authors Work Together to Create Compelling Memoirs
Working with a talented and experienced memoir ghostwriter is a deeply collaborative process. The best ghostwriters don’t just tell your story, but they do so in your voice — based on the extensive research and fact-checking that is so key for autobiographies and memoirs.
Each ghost has a unique process, but memoir authors working with a ghostwriter can generally expect:
- Extensive interviews with the ghostwriter. The ghost has to get to know you deeply to tell your story and will seek to understand what you are hoping to achieve with your memoir before beginning the writing process as well.
- Extensive interviews with key people in your life. People and experiences form the core of our life stories. Your ghostwriter will want to get to know the important people in your life and hear their angle on important events the memoir covers.
- Fact-checking. Memoir authors won’t remember everything correctly. Especially when it comes to early childhood, you’re more likely to clearly remember the feelings you had than factual details like the address of the home your family resided in or the name of a fifth-grade teacher. Factual correctness is crucial, including for legal reasons, and a skilled memoir ghostwriter can become an investigative reporter who ensures the memoir gets all the details right.
Armed with extensive research and an intimate understanding of who you are as a person, an excellent ghostwriter can then help you decide how to structure your story and get to work on writing it. Your ghostwriter will be the one doing the writing, but make no mistake — your memoir will have your voice and tell your story.
- How to Hire a Ghostwriter
Memoir writers often share their deepest feelings and most intense experiences with the world. This makes publishing a memoir an immensely vulnerable decision, and choosing a ghostwriter one of the most important steps you take.
If you are not already deeply involved in the literary world, you may not know where to start. Reedsy’s memoir and biography ghostwriters are an excellent starting point, as the ghosts that make it into the platform are rigorously vetted.
Even knowing that every ghostwriter on the list is experienced and talented, choosing the right ghostwriter is a complex task. Interviewing potential ghostwriters begins with a very normal chat that allows you to get a feel for the writer’s personality and energy. You’ll be able to assess how much of an active listener the ghost is and how well you think they can tell your story.
Ghostwriters should be able to offer writing samples, too. These may not be examples of previously-published ghostwritten memoirs, due to the discrete nature of this process (you wouldn’t want your memoirs to be offered up as a sample, either!), but there should be something. You’ll be able to get references from previous clients in many cases, as well.
Don’t forget to make clear agreements about the payment before the ghostwriting process begins. It helps if you know approximately how long you want your memoirs to be and have a clear idea about the scope of the book in advance. This enables the ghostwriter to lay out a plan, and estimate how long it will take to pen your memoirs.
- Working with a Ghostwriter Is Beautifully Messy
If you are ready to take the next step in signing a contract with a ghostwriter, expect the process that follows to get messy — in the best way possible. Working with a ghostwriter isn’t a hands-off process; you’re the architect, and your experiences are the book’s building blocks.
Send your ghostwriter all your thoughts, important events, timelines, chapters you wrote yourself and abandoned, memories that suddenly pop up, and anything else you think of. Answer your ghost’s questions, and add anything else you remember later to the pile of source material.
You may imagine your life as a jumbled collection of events, people, and experiences, but in sharing everything that has made you who you are now with the ghost, a coherent and compelling story can begin to emerge.
Don’t be scared to be honest, even if you think you’ll scare readers off — celebrity memoirs have plummeted in popularity because nobody wants to read perfectly-curated stories about fake lives. Modern readers want to get to know you, warts and all, and highly value authenticity.
As the research stage of the memoir-writing process comes to an end and the writing part is in full swing, your ghost will send you periodic updates and chapters to offer feedback on. Depending on the relationship you build with the memoir ghostwriter, you may be deeply involved in the writing.
Ghostwriters have an undeservedly bad reputation. Think of yours not as a cheating tool but as a midwife, and you instantly get a better idea of what they really do. Ghostwriters ensure that you don’t need to be a good writer to publish a moving memoir — you just need a fascinating story.