As an English major, I occasionally spend time pondering if I will ever find a career that allows me to apply my skills profitably. Many jobs require writing skills, but there are usually more specializations required to achieve financial stability. Being the procrastinator that I am, I began looking at local publishing firms to gauge how likely they would be to print my works, and something that I kept seeing on their home pages was “ghostwriting available”.
I came across the term ghostwriting a couple years ago when I was watching the Netflix series, BoJack Horseman. In the show, a retired actor hires a ghostwriter to work on his autobiography for him. With this limited experience in mind, I delved a little deeper into what that field is.
To put it bluntly, a ghostwriter is someone paid to write work with your name on it, essentially a mercenary of the world of literary integrity. I was able to find a few blogs written by former ghostwriters relating their experiences in the field.
The first page was rather supportive of the job. Andrew Crofts is a professional ghostwriter. According to Crofts, it offers freedom in terms of time management, writing voice, and through interacting with the “author”, one has a steady stream of ideas that he did not need to think of (http://andrewcrofts.com). He does, in passing, mention that there is little glory in the work, but justifies it with experiences from the past in which the glory of being published was only fleeting.
Demian Farnworth, on the other hand does ghostwriting as a side job. He was able to make a solid profit, and have works published all across the internet, but found the lack of recognition to be dehumanizing. “In fact, after about three months I was utterly depressed. Like, near suicidal,” said Farnworth. (https://raventools.com/blog/truth-about-ghostwriting/)
He goes on to explain that oftentimes, ghostwriters only choose that career for financial means in the hopes of eventually being able to spread their name in the literary world and, in time, publish under their own name. What can happen sometimes is that these writers are used, and thrown away without gaining the connections and behind-the-scenes reputation needed to work their way up to being publicly published. This leads to writers being stuck as ghost writers as a career of necessity.
A common theme on these blogs is the question of “is ghostwriting ethical?” When put into the context of what is allowed in an academic setting, to put it bluntly this is considered cheating. However, in the professional world, the line between plagiarism and ownership can be crossed with a contract. This does not make it sound any cleaner, but the truth of the matter is that many celebrities, CEOs, and politicians rely on ghostwriters to author their “autobiographies” and memoirs, or more commonly, manage social media accounts.
While the world of ghostwriting sounds like a nasty place, there are good qualities. Some people have life experiences and stories that are rich and vivid, stories that are truly unique and remarkable, yet due to circumstances in life, these people may not have developed the writing skills necessary to convey these stories. Furthermore, the moment that someone else’s name is printed on a book about one’s life, the credibility is reappraised as opinion.
Ghostwriters do more than we realize. It is possible that much of today’s books are written by people who will never receive recognition for their long hours of work. It may not be a glamourous career, but it is still a way to apply writing skills in a way that shares the stories that no one else can.
