How to be a ghost writer in ten easy steps - lesson 5

by Linda Watson-Brown - 22:48 on 24 October 2011



And that’s why you can’t question the writing.

You can’t get into a flap about your muse. You can’t wonder if you’re going to reach your word limit that day. You can’t think that you’ll never make that deadline. You just have to do it.

Now, if I were to write my own book with my own name on the cover, I’m sure it would be a different story, so to speak, but as a ghost . . . well, don’t be daft. The client came to you because you can do this, because this is something which doesn’t register when it comes to the creation of 80,000 words, written for a specific genre, which Tesco and Asda will want to sell (because they’re pretty much all we have now), and which will make the publisher money.

So, really? You’re going to try telling client, agent, publisher that you’re waiting for inspiration? Good luck with that – and the new career you’re going to have to find.

I’m not lying about this bit: there is nothing I like better than pulling up a new document, seeing that blank page, and knowing that I have to write every single word. It’s like a field of snow, that no one else has stepped in, an expanse of beach which no one has defiled, and it’s the only part of the process that belongs to me. I think it’s what drives me. If I finish the book I’m on, I can start another one, and the starting is the best it of all.

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