A famous writer, once said,
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
- George Orwell.
If this is how it feels to write just any, regular book... then how must it feel to take on the complicated task of writing another person's story... as if you were them?
Well, I can tell you... it feels a lot of complex different ways...
I embarked on this exact journey a few months ago with a client, and over the past few months, I've done a TON of work.
It started with writing a 5+ page proposal of terms for the book contract (some of which actually made it directly into the contract which was fleshed out by an attorney), I've interviewed and talked at least 50+ hours together with my client, I've written about 26 pages of notes; I then created an 11+ page expanded outline identifying main plot and subplot elements, major acts, series, and scenes.
I've traveled 2,000 miles to meet my client, spent two days in an amazing city, and started the drafting of the actual manuscript. Rather than writing the whole thing at once and attempting to cover years of my client's life without guidance, we decided to collaborate in a .doc application.
The idea was, this would enable us to write the minor details of the story correctly (especially for the first chapters) in the effort to attain a solid foundation to traject from.
Then, something peculiar started happening...
I had sent off the first 25 pages of the manuscript my client forrr them for review, and as they read the material they noticed the story was inaccurate in some areas.
...the thing was... those areas were places in my client's memory that had previously been darkened by time.
It seemed that by reading the slightly incorrect narrative I had written, it nagged at the subconscious (and some repressed) memories that my client possessed... memories that had been hidden for 20+ years!
Now, from the standpoint of a friend... seeking the success of the book and, of course, my client... This was a great thing!
It meant that my client was beginning to deal with the past and that would be a wonderful healing process. It also meant that we were going to achieve an even stronger story with more depth...
HOWEVER... from the standpoint of someone trying to write a book... who has to deal with all the after-effects of changing the elements of a large body of text.... IT WAS A NIGHTMARE!
Writing has a flow that can easily be interrupted by the most minor changes.
There are countless subtle nuances within a story, foreshadowing, purposeful shifts of emotional polarity, subconscious cues for readers, specific images of symbolism created in the audience's mind to produce a HIGHLY SPECIFIC emotional payoff that the readers may not even know exists...
All of these things are linked to one another, and changing only one of them can throw the entire story (and its audience) into confused oblivion...
When this happens, it forces you (the writer) to go back through every word, sentence, paragraph, and page to make sure the story has continuity.
The audience must have a streamlined supply of images that deliver the perfect information... information in the form of a powerful, multi-level story that relays a solid sense of reality.
It has to be so real, they could float from their seat and out of earth's atmosphere, only realizing their plight when there was no longer enough oxygen to supply the tiny muscles operating their little, reading eyes.
The upside is...
Doing the project this way is working. It is slower, but it is working. It has added significant amounts of depth and understanding between client and ghostwriter. It has helped us to build that solid foundation to traject from.
However, when I came up with the idea of collaborating this way, I thought it was going to go like this:
Step 1 - Build the perfect foundation.
Step 2 - Build the launch pad.
Step 3 - Launch!
Step three was supposed to be easy... in retrospect... I don't think it is going to go like this.
I'm fairly certain that to achieve the best results, we will have to continue hashing and rehashing over the same texts, taking it slow... one... excruciating... step... at... a... time.... until...
... we get EVERYTHING down.
Then, I'll have to go back through, putting the manuscript beside an empty doc... and rewrite the entire thing, AGAIN...
It's going to be a lot of work, but I truly believe the finished product will be a masterpiece. At the very least, my client will have surfaced a bunch of painful memories and experienced significant healing from the endeavor.
That alone is worth a lot...
So what's it like to ghostwrite someone else's story?
I'll tell you when I'm finished...
But so far...
It's incredibly rewarding... and simultaneously... insane.
This kind of writing is capable of authoring unteachable lessons, and writing them on the hearts and minds of both client and writer... It is both enlightening... and a meticulously difficult process.
About the Theory of Repressed Memories
I think we're really onto something. It has been blowing my client away... the number of 'impossible to remember' minute details which have been pulled from the recesses of the mind and displayed in bright light as if it was happening all over.
It is scary for my client... and also rewarding...
What do you think?