Confessions of a Ghostwriter – Andrew Crofts

 

First published in the English in 2014

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I had not expected to be reading this book so soon. I’ve got so many other books sitting on my shelves, some that have been bought way before this one. (Sometimes, I even feel guilty towards those books that I haven’t yet gotten to, but that’s a story for another day.)

The thing is, I had picked up this book at a sale some time last year. The title, Confessions of a Ghostwriter got me right off the bat—after all, I am a ghostwriter myself. I don’t know of any other ghostwriters, so I was curious to see what it was like for someone else who also does what I do, but with a great deal more experience and success.

In this book, Crofts shares short anecdotes of the experiences he’s collected in his years of writing for others. He tells us about the funny characters he’s come across, the amusing things some of them say to him, and some of the odd circumstances he has found himself in.

To be honest, I don’t really know where to start in terms of describing how comfortable and reassured this book made me feel. I’m not weird, I’m not odd, I’m not the only one. It felt amazing.

There were, for me, a great many quotable quotes contained within the pages. Here are a few that I’ve found particularly cheeky.

Ghosts, like other authors, need to be able to remain objective, slightly distant, hovering above the emotion, watching and noting what it looks and sounds like. But at the same time we need to understand what it feels like in order to convey it to the reader.

Extremes of evil are as interesting as extremes of goodness. Extremes of wealth are as interesting as extremes of poverty. Without the bad guys there would be virtually no drama and no storylines strong enough to hold anyone’s attention, no vampires or zombies or serial killers. Life is indeed a bitch.

The moment you decide that you are going to earn your living as a freelance writer (or a freelance anything for that matter), you condemn yourself to a lifetimes of thinking about money. Every day you will find yourself frantically doing sums in your head when you should be thinking about something more productive, trying to reconcile the money that you think you are going to be earning in the next month or two with the bills that you know for sure are going to be coming in.

I am confident this is a book I’ll be flipping through regularly, if not to look for gems of wisdom, then to at least feel not so alone in the world of ghosts.