As a ghostwriter with over seven years of experience, I’ve penned and published over 10 books for celebrities and New York Times bestselling authors alike. I’ve seen books that I wrote on billboards and talk shows, propped up in windows at bookstores and even recommended to me. I know what it takes to write a book that grips audiences, even if those audiences don’t know who I am.  

Now, however, my debut novel–the first book with my own name–is coming out this July. Difficult Girls follows a teen girl who gets her dream job at a local theme park… only for it to turn into a nightmare when a performer goes missing. The book exists, in many ways, because of the skills I finetuned while ghostwriting. 

1. Voice Is Everything 

One of the most important skills to have as a ghostwriter is your ability to match the voice of the author who you’re writing for. It’s imperative–especially if you’re writing for a well-known author or celebrity–that the reader is unable to detect that someone else is writing the work. Even if I’m writing for a celebrity who hasn’t written something before, there are still cadences in their speech and a flow to how they tell a story. So, I study how they speak, the way they use anecdotes, the types of metaphors they use, and more to make sure my writing sounds authentically like them. 

One of my favorite compliments I’ve received as a ghostwriter is a client telling me that they know I wrote it but they’re still shocked because the work sounds exactly like they wrote it. And that’s the goal! I want to slip into their voice so effortlessly that even the author themself could be fooled.

Even if you aren’t trying to match another writer’s voice, you want your characters to sound uniquely like them. If they’re a devoted painter, they probably will use phrases related to their craft. It would be possibly out of place if they used, say, the language of a football player… unless they’re hiding a secret talent for it, of course! 

2. Outlining Makes It Go Faster (Yes, Really, I’m Sorry) 

I can already hear the “pantsers” coming for me here, and I get it. You don’t want to outline. You don’t like outlining. It hurts your creative process and confines you. And honestly, if you know all of that for a fact, feel free to ignore this piece of advice. I can only speak to what works for me. 

And for me, outlines expedite the work tremendously. 

Usually, when I’m ghostwriting, I’m being paid for three things: my skills, my secrecy, and my speed. I’ve had to ghostwrite entire books in two weeks. But the only reason I can do that is because I know what I need to write. The outlines may vary in terms of how fleshed out they are, but I know the characters and the stakes at least. I also don’t have time to second guess myself. This isn’t my story, after all. It’s someone else’s, and my job is to simply execute their vision. 

I carry this with me to my own work. With Difficult Girls, I created multiple outlines. I used color-coded index cards to track character arcs and growth over the course of the book, and I spread them out over my living room so that I could literally see the progression of the beats. Even with revisions, I would re-outline to make sure the book was progressing as it needed to. Obviously, sometimes, things change, and the difference with my own work versus my ghostwriting work is that I can stray from the outline if something’s not working. But at least I have a road map, and that keeps me moving more often than not. 

3. You Can’t Edit What Does Not Exist 

With the time crunch that ghostwriting often brings, I don’t have weeks of development to question myself. I have to get words on the page–fast. But the good news is that they don’t have to be the best words that I’ve ever written… at least, not initially. They simply need to exist. Once they’re down on the page, I can cut what’s not working, I can add what’s necessary, I can shape and mold the words on the page to become what I need them to be. But I can’t do any of that with a blank page. 

So, I trust myself. I trust myself to know that the first draft’s job is simply to be there for me to tweak and edit. I might even have to throw some of it out, if it comes to it. But it needs to be there for me to do any of that. And so, I put less stress on myself to make it perfect the moment it leaves my fingertips. I just let the story be, and then I make it better. 

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4. Writing (and Reading) Outside Your Genre of Choice Is Good for You 

I have ghostwritten across a variety of genres: fantasy, romance, sci-fi, nonfiction, just to name a few. Thankfully, I’ve always been someone who likes to read across genres, and this penchant for a diversified reading palette has served me well as a ghostwriter. I know multiple genre expectations and can write accordingly. 

More than that, though, I’ve learned from writing professionally in these genres that they all have conventions and audience expectations. Of course, an author might subvert these, but knowing them is essential in order to break the rules intentionally. Knowing these habits of each genre has taught me valuable skills as a writer: the necessity of world-building, tension, characterization, and more.  

Further, I can bring in skills from each genre to my own work to make something that stands out and appeals to a wider range of readers. With Difficult Girls, having a romance subplot was crucial to the story, and thanks to my work ghostwriting romance, I felt confident with my ability to weave a realistic, charming romance into a murder mystery. 

5. Failure Isn’t a Bad Thing… and It Isn’t the End 

Any writer who has stepped into the querying trenches knows that it’s a terrifying and often heartbreaking place to be. You wake up every morning to refresh your inbox to see if you finally have that one yes that’s going to change your life. Unfortunately, for most writers, that inbox is full of more rejection than acceptance–mine certainly was. And, even once you do have representation, you move from querying to submission… where even more rejection awaits. 

I’ve had my share of failure, including books that didn’t make it on submission. That failure and frustration led me to beg my agent to put me up for any kind of writing job. I just wanted the chance to write, so I’d try anything. 

So, I auditioned for ghostwriting jobs. And when I auditioned, we sent them one of the manuscripts that I’d written that had “failed” on submission. Something truly unexpected and magical happened when we did this: That failed manuscript got me every ghostwriting job I applied for. It built me an entire ghostwriting career that expanded my skills so that, one day, we went on submission and sold a book… Difficult Girls, to be exact. 

Failure was an essential piece of my story. Without failure, I wouldn’t have tried ghostwriting and learned all these lessons about storytelling. I wouldn’t be here today with my first book coming out with my own name on it. Ghostwriting taught me so many essential lessons, most importantly to believe in myself. 

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Okay, so that’s really three questions shrink-wrapped into one, and there’s no easy answer to any one of them, but I always give it my best shot: Yes, I’ll say … or, sometimes … or, it depends.

Not all that helpful, huh?

Truth is, I don’t have the first idea if the two skill sets are related, or in what ways. I only know that I’m able to write my way from Page One to Page Last each time out. How I’ve managed to fill the pages in between, over the course of 70+ books … well, that’s a bit of a mystery, even to me.

I’ve been telling stories for a living for 40 years. Most of that living has been in the re-telling of other people’s stories, helping to write the autobiographies and memoirs of celebrities like Serena Williams, Denzel Washington, Steve Aoki, and Whoopi Goldberg, but scratching my own head to see what comes out and then finding a way to set it down on paper is a very different enterprise than chronicling the lives or capturing the thoughts and reminiscences of my famous co-authors.

(Daniel Paisner: On the Pursuit of a Creative Life)

At bottom, the goal is the same: to engage the reader and tell a story in a page-turning way. But I’ve often wondered why it is that I’ve only managed to write four novels over the course of my career, while writing more than 70 books on behalf of others. One surface explanation for this disparity is the fact that these ghostwriting assignments pay the bills. After all, the bottom line is the bottom line, and a writing life is a writing life, so I consider myself blessed to be able to earn a living with my pen and what I can find of my wits. It’s worked out that I’ve been able to extract a living from these collaborations, which tend to be widely read. Meanwhile, my own books have earned me nothing resembling a living and tend to be less widely read­—so I guess it makes sense that I’m more productive when I don’t really have a choice in the matter. But that only explains a piece of that disproportion—a small piece, in fact. The truth is, writing for others comes naturally to me; writing for myself, somewhat less so, which means that when I do find the time to write for myself, the words don’t always flow so easily.

I suppose it’s helpful here to acknowledge the key difference in the two types of books I write. When I’m working on someone else’s behalf, giving voice to a lived experience, I know the story. It’s up and happened—very often in a very public way. My choices as a writer have mostly to do with tone and structure and emphasis. When I’m writing my own novel, I’m making it up as I go along. My choices are also about tone and structure and emphasis, but also about everything else. I need to populate my story with interesting characters, snappy dialogue, colorful descriptions … all of that. Oh, and a story. (Can’t forget that part.)

Consider: My new novel Balloon Dog, out this summer from Koehler Books, tells the story of a brazen art heist gone wrong. Somewhere in there, it also tells the story of a writer on the dispiriting end of a disappointing career—wondering not only what he might write about next, but who might be inclined to read it. One early reader called the book a literary mash-up of The Hot Rock, a wild caper wherein Robert Redford and company end up stealing the same diamond again and again; and A Serious Man, the black comedy from the Coen brothers about a man whose life falls apart in ways that leave him questioning his Jewish faith and the road ahead. Another said it was like the love child of a Carl Hiaasen novel and a Jonathan Franzen novel, and still another wrote that it was as if Elmore Leonard and Philip Roth had decided to throw in on a book together. I’m not sure what these lovely and quite possibly flattering comps have to tell us about my book, except that people seem to want to assess a likeable thing by comparing it to two unalike but also likeable things.

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Balloon Dog centers on the theft of an industrial-sized Jeff Koons sculpture, and this was perhaps the only piece of the novel’s puzzle that came to me fully formed. It had up-and-happened—kinda, sorta—and how it up-and-happened was this: I was weekending at a friend’s beach house when a couple truckloads of art movers pulled up and announced that they were there to dismantle a very delicate, very valuable sculpture, which they were meant to crate and store for the winter. Actually, the house belonged to my friend’s brother, so for a beat or two we had no idea if these art movers were legit, and in the space between the trucks’ arrival and the eventual all clear, an idea took hold. What would happen if a suspect-looking band of art movers turned up in a similar setting, under similar circumstances, and attempted to remove a similar sculpture from its base without anyone noticing—an art heist in plain sight?

It was, I thought, a great jumping-off point for a novel I might or might not ever get around to writing, and this was where the fiction of that moment took over. It took its sweet time, I’m afraid, because this is where things get tricky for me. Turns out I’m at my most efficient when I have a clear goal in mind as a writer. However, the sliver of brain that houses my meager reserves of creativity doesn’t really switch on when there’s a fixed agenda. In other words, when the story has already been told and there’s a deadline looming, I can find the spine of a piece and bring it to life on the page. In those moments, the writing feels more like craft than art. But when there’s no deadline … when there’s no publisher or editor or client reading over my shoulder with a fixed idea of what I should be writing and on what schedule I should be writing it … when there’s no story, and no cast of characters to help me tell it … well, then it can take me a good long while to find my way.

Here all I had was the whiff of a germ of a kernel of an idea, and all the time in the world to think it through. Or not. Either way, it was on me to figure it out.

About that figuring it out: What slows me down as a novelist is the part I most enjoy. Don’t misunderstand, I enjoy writing books for so many endlessly fascinating and variously successful people. But there’s something thrilling about staring down a blank page, with no idea at first how to fill it, and trusting that the spigots will open in just the right way, in just the right time, and that the right words will ultimately find me. It’s like jumping out of a plane and trusting that your parachute will open: Until it does, it’s terrifying; once it does, it’s exhilarating.

What I’ve found over the years is that the real terror is finding something to say—something that might resonate with readers. That’s the piece I’m not always called upon to supply when I write for someone else, and when I am I invariably push back. Once, when I was working on a parenting book with a well-known television personality, my co-author turned to me and said, “We need to have something in there about children of divorce.” Then, to put an exclamation point on it, he said, “We need to hit that hard.”

And that was that. What, exactly, did he want me to say? Where was I supposed to find these hard-hitting insights and strategies? My celebrity co-author was meant to be the parenting authority in this transaction. I was meant to be his mouthpiece … that’s all. If I knew enough to pass myself off as an expert, my kid wouldn’t have been the one biting the other children in pre-school.

The upshot?

Tell me what to say, and I’m all over it.

Leave it to me to come up with something meaningful, or insightful, or even just a little bit new to say about this or that and it might take a while until my chute opens and I can enjoy that soft fall back to earth.

In the end, with Balloon Dog, I reached for what I knew, and what I knew was this: As a ghost, I was a successful, sought-after writer. As a novelist, I was struggling to find an audience. And so, because I spend my days working alongside ridiculously successful artists and athletes and entrepreneurs who have turned their struggles into lasting legacies, I found myself thinking more and more about the nature of art, the place we make for it in our lives, the value we attach to it and the power it can hold over us. That’s what I decided to write about—and once I did, I found the words to write what I hoped would emerge as a darkly funny novel that pushes readers to consider what it means to create something of value… even if it’s a multi-million dollar Balloon Dog sculpture that looks like a child’s fairgrounds souvenir on steroids.

We’ll see how it turned out.

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The post Connecting the Dots vs. Drawing the Whole Damn Picture: A Veteran Ghostwriter Takes Back His Pen and Finds Something To Say appeared first on Writer's Digest.

One of the first things fledgling ghostwriters learn about their job is how similar it is to dating. It can get very intimate very quickly—authors often share their deepest secrets with their collaborators within weeks of meeting. It usually involves ongoing negotiation—from deal points through communication styles. And clients will inevitably carry some emotional baggage into the relationship—from deep-seated insecurities, to professional or familial strains, to a scarring experience with a prior partner.

Most engagements are professional and productive. Many turn into lasting relationships, some even lifelong friendships. But much like dating today, almost every ghost pro will have at least one horror story to recount if asked. They come in many scenarios—clients who were emotionally and editorially unavailable, bombarded their ghosts with texts at all hours or ghosted their ghost (typically without pay). Most of these stories have two common threads: They tend to happen early in a ghost’s career, and there were clear red flags about the client that—much like in the early days of a romantic relationship—the ghosts were blind to because of the client’s charm, fame or wallet.

What makes this hazard challenging for new ghosts to navigate is the confidential ethos of the field. As with Fight Club, the rules of Ghost World discourage talking about what happens in Ghost World—even the clients who put a beating on you. This is one big difference between dating and collaborating: there are not dozens of websites like DontDateHimGirl.com that tell you how to spot an asshole client or call them out by name. As a result, this is a rite of passage that too many ghosts have to suffer through on their own.

To help remedy this situation, I asked my agency’s network of 2,400+ ghostwriters to share their ugliest experiences and the lessons learned. Here are the worst hits and best tips in spotting, handling and ideally avoiding difficult clients.

The Polygamist

One problematic situation ghosts encounter is the author who insists on bringing other partners into the relationship as a reader and critic. Sometimes it’s a threesome with a spouse. Sometimes it gets truly polyamorous, with multiple friends with too many benefits involved. Most times it leads to a mess. 

Marlayna Glynn says that after going through a trying conceptual evolution with a client, the author shared the second version of the manuscript Glynn produced with several friends, including some named in the book. It turns out ‘friends’ don’t always like the way they are portrayed. The client took all their friends’ criticism to heart, regardless of its merit, and cited the friends’ negative feedback in terminating the relationship.

PRO TIP: To prevent disaster by committee, get to know the client’s inner circle before committing and assess if there is a meddling spouse or business partner looming. Then set boundaries in the contract. “I am very forthright now that the writing and editing process is between me and the client only,” Glynn advises. “I will not make any changes requested by anyone I am not contracted with in writing.”

The Uncommitted

Another problematic profile is the author who is ambivalent about the project—or even worse, totally absent. More than one of our ghosts relayed stories of clients never reading the manuscript draft before it was submitted to the editor or, in one case, after it was published. This lack of availability can cause major headaches for the ghost. Sometimes in can threaten a publishing deal. Bronwyn Fryer says she collaborated with a medical doctor who went MIA for five months during the writing process, without one word of feedback on the drafts submitted. It turned out her client had serious medical problems involving an organ transplant, which the ghost never knew. Fryer eventually needed three extensions on the project and had to pen innumerable drafts.

Other times, it can cost the ghost serious money. To win his first big client – a chairman of a federal agency—Oren Rawls agreed to take only $1,000 up front and get paid upon delivering chapter drafts. He poured in more than 100 hours of prep work. But after Rawls turned in the first chapter, the Chairman disengaged without much explanation. Rawls spent months chasing him down and later found out that the client had been investigated for financial malfeasance. “The lesson learned (at $4.08 an hour): No matter how important a client may be to your business, never work too far ahead of your last check.”

PRO TIP: Be discriminating up front. “I’m happy to work with anyone honorable in any way that makes them comfortable,” Fryer says, “but if he/she isn’t an ethical, respectful person, I don’t want to be part of it.” Make sure the contract and/or work plan you start with spells out the client’s obligations and deadlines, with clear consequences for violating them.

The “Should Be” Committed

The most dangerous authors are the ones that would be considered “psychos” in the dating world. They run the gamut from erratic, unreasonable, dishonest, paranoid and abusive. Here are a few of the more illustrative examples our writers shared:

Early in Louise Bernikow’s career, she was hired by a therapist and her patient who wanted to write a book together about the patient’s journey to healing. Bernikow received her standard 10-hour retainer up front. The therapist then sent all her session notes in three huge binders, but never agreed to meet and discuss the project, and neither she nor the patient answered email or phone calls. “They really expected me to turn those binders into a finished book,” Bernikow related. When Bernikow explained why that wasn’t possible, the client sued her for the retainer. A lawyer friend eventually got the suit dropped. 

PRO TIP: Clarify expectations on obligations up front. Spell out what you will do and what the client will do and when. And be sure to include a timetable and any other appropriate details.

Justine Duhr’s nightmare happened during the negotiating phase with a client who strung her and her agency team along for months, haggling over every line of the contract. Over time his behavior grew more alarming, leaving voicemails in the middle of the night demanding to know why the ghost wasn’t picking up the phone, and sending 3 a.m. emails full of questions and commands, with angry 3:15 a.m. follow-ups wondering why we hadn’t yet replied. He asked for new services to be added to the scope for no extra money. In the end, the client signed the agreement and submitted his first payment, only to demand a refund and threaten a lawsuit less than 12 hours later. He had changed his mind about writing the book.

PRO-TIP: If it talks like a schmuck and walks like a schmuck, it probably is. So heed the warning signs. “Sometimes for our sanity’s sake it’s best to say thanks but no thanks,” Duhr said.

Cliff Carle recalls getting hired to help a client pump up a thriller that was, Carle says, “devoid of thrills.” Carle returned a reworked manuscript that followed the client’s instructions to a T. The next day, the client called him screaming because he mistakenly thought he had only asked for line edits. Carle had the smart idea to ask an independent editor of the client’s choosing to arbitrate. The editor told the client that Carle’s version “greatly enhanced the story.” The client responded with an explosion of profanities, telling Carle he was a hack and “you’ll never make it in this business.” 

PRO TIP: To avoid misunderstandings, especially on editing jobs, get the client to provide specific guidance in writing on exactly what they want done. Have an early opt-out clause in your standard contract, Carle advises, “whereby if you can’t see eye-to-eye, you can bail, but still get paid for the work you’ve done.”

The Common Enemy

John Kador had his share of projects blow up because of unreasonable clients. “But there was only one common element among all those disasters: me,” Kador says. 

“Clients, like boyfriends and girlfriends, will always show you who they are. The hard part is believing them when you’re desperate,” Kador added. “As I look back on the mishaps, I can see that in every case I had hesitations about the project and went ahead anyway. The key to protecting myself is to have good policies and stick with them. The power of a policy lies in protecting me from fear and seduction.”

Kador’s most hard and fast rule is meeting in person before doing a deal. This will add time and cost, but the payoff is worth it. “Pay for the trip out of pocket if you have to,” he says. “Most upstanding clients will agree to reimburse you. If a potential client can’t get it together to meet with you, walk away and consider yourself lucky.”

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Have you ever considered what would happen if an author died before publishing their book? Would it be buried with them? Fortunately, my close friend planned ahead and willed me the rights to his unpublished works.

For many authors, there is that one teacher, mentor, or friend that inspired them to write and supported their dream. For me, that person was Arthur “Pete” Ballard.

The year was 1985. I was about 15 years old, and I was attending North Carolina School of the Arts as a flute player. Think Hogwarts for the arts. I was many miles from my home in Florida, and I remember walking into his classroom. He looked like a cross between Van Gogh and Hemingway. Wild white hair with a beard to match. A coffee ring on his desk from his endless spills, and the air was full of his cigarette smoke from his Pall Malls. (This was the ’80s in a school of bohemians).

He read The Scarlett Letter and The Crucible to us, and he opened my world to literature and great writing. Then I got sick. I was in the hospital for a week, and Mr. Ballard visited me daily with flowers and a card signed by my classmates. My mother came and took me home to recover, and the next year I returned to school, and we remained friends.

Even though I was studying music, he inspired me to write. Even after I graduated, we remained friends for the rest of his life. It only took me about 25 years to believe I could be a writer, even though he knew it all along.

Pete Ballard’s life could be the memoir of the “Most Interesting Man in the World,” even though he was a teetotaler. His friends were Sarah Churchill (daughter of Winston Churchill), Thornton Wilder (award-winning author and playwright) and Vivien Leigh (Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind) and Tennessee Williams (American playwright), just to name a few. He raced camels in Arabia and was present for two international wars as a warden of peace. That barely scratches the surface of who the man was, but to me, he was very dear friend and confidant.

His one wish before he passed away was to publish his two books and his collection of short stories, but alas, it was not to be. And so, in his will he passed the rights to the works to me, with a promise I would do what he could not.

Pete was not a man of the digital era, and so all his manuscripts were handwritten and typed. Quite the task to decipher and quite the responsibility to complete. I have never met any other writer who received such an inheritance.

I share this inheritance with my friend Craig Spurlock, who was also a student of Pete’s. Craig is in the film industry and Pete always imagined his books as movies. Again, no pressure.

I am a ghostwriter to a ghost. His persona is etched into my psyche, which under normal circumstances as a ghostwriter, would be a good thing. Lately, he has appeared in my dreams, complete with his faithful cloud of smoke. He asks me how I am progressing and quickly shoots down my excuses. I loved the man in life, but as a ghost, he can be pretty demanding. Worst client ever! I can’t even fire him.

His work intimidates me. How can I possibly write the way he did? If I have questions, who can I ask? His books were written over many years, and not only do they need to be transcribed into a word processor, but they need to be updated for today’s market.

I have spent countless hours with him, and when I close my eyes I can see him sitting in his wingback chair, with one cigarette between two fingers and ashtray full of ones he had forgotten he had lit. I can hear his gravelly voice with his slight West Virginian twang telling about his early life living in a small coal town.

I ask a question about the book, close my eyes, and imagine how he would answer it, and listen for the words he would use. This is important because his main characters are all representations of him. It is this roll of film I have in my head of the thousands of hours we spoke. Well, he mostly spoke, and I just listened. I must capture the ghost in ink and fiber.

It is an unusual situation, and a challenge in which I hope I will learn more about myself as a writer, especially a ghostwriter. I am extremely honored that he chose me for the task, but I may need a psychic medium before I’m done.

Do yourself a favor, and have a talk with your family about how you want them to handle your manuscripts. Put it in writing or talk to an attorney. Give your words a chance to become immortal even though you are not.

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As a lawyer and a writer, I truly believe that the key to successful collaborative writing, from an equal co-authorship to a ghostwritten autobiography, is a good contract that is clear about who has what roles, how rights and burdens are shared, and—absolutely essential—how to unwind the project if things implode.

With or without a lawyer’s help, here are the key terms your collaboration agreement should cover:

1. How Are Responsibilities Shared?

The first critical question is: What has to get done, and who will be responsible for doing it? Keep in mind that there are several components to any successful writing project, often having little to do with putting pen on paper:

First is planning and plotting: What’s the book about? From whose perspective will it be told? To what age or readership is it pitched? How will the book be organized: how many chapters, how long, and what will each cover? And don’t assume that, because you’ve answered these once, you’re done; many answers need to be revisited multiple times as the project progresses.

Memoir Writing: Legal Issues You Need to Know

Second, particularly if this is nonfiction, is research. Unless you are THE expert or authority on the topics you plan to cover (and probably even if you are) someone will need to – or hire and direct others to—review the literature; get (and comply with) permission to access confidential and protected resources; keep excellent notes and records; and go back to the trough periodically to be sure your information is current.

To be clear, research isn’t always limited to nonfiction. Even if you heed the admonition to “write what you know,” unless you’re writing pure fantasy you may need to check geographical details, weather data, scientific information, biographical data, and the like.

Third is the business end, which includes: finding your agent or publisher (and possibly lawyer, publicist and others); reviewing and negotiating contracts; dealing with editors and others throughout the project; and getting permission to use (or confirming “fair use” of) third party material. When it’s just one writer, it’s pretty clear who does what: you do it ALL (unless you’re lucky enough to have an involved – and competent – spouse or partner to whom you can offload various task. However, too much offloading and you have a collaboration on your hands).

Fourth, of course, is the writing: words strung into compelling sentences into logical paragraphs into can’t-put-down chapters, all edited and polished and edited again. This is often the hardest part: Buttocks in chair, fingers on keyboard, grinding it out.

Lastly, you need to divvy up these tasks in a way that is both fair and efficient. Don’t assume either that your partners agree that you’re the strongest writer or that, even if you are, you should be tasked with the most writing. Perhaps your team sees you as the strongest business mind, or the person with the strongest publishing knowledge or industry connections, or the best interviewer, etc., and expects you to focus on that aspect of the project.

Until it becomes clear who does what, it’s unlikely that things will fall into place as they need to for success.

2. How Are Benefits and Burdens Shared?

Some people become writers for fame (long shot); others for fortune (what fools!); yet others to express themselves in words—whether through fiction (requiring excellent imagination) or nonfiction (requiring skill in organizing and presenting facts). Whatever your motivation, the main benefits of being an author are: credit (having a certain work attributed to YOU); control (having the right to determine how and when particular content is copied, adapted, sold and displayed); and profit (a right to receive the financial fruits of people’s willingness to pay for the privilege of reading or otherwise experiencing your work).

The second key to a successful collaboration is a fair allocation of these benefits: Who will be publicly credited with creation of the work? (I have seen legal battles over whose name goes first, and in what type size, on the cover of a co-authored book.) How will earnings be divided? (It is natural, but not always fair, to assume a 50/50 or 1/3-1/3-1/3 split.) Who gets to decide whether and by whom the work may be copied, adapted, sold or displayed? (Often the person charged with business responsibilities has extra influence, but it is not unusual for all writing partners to have equal say or veto power.) Ideally all of these questions will be answered in the collaboration agreement.

But don’t forget that it’s not all fame, fortune and dividing the spoils: As noted above, there are jobs to be done, and potential liabilities to be shared: If a third party claims your work infringes, or sues for defamation, negligence or breach of privacy, who is responsible, either to hire the lawyer or to pay the damages? Sharing these risks sounds fair, but what if the claim relates only to one author’s contribution?

Suppose, for example, that one of three co-authors copies a passage from another work without clearing it with her co-authors or getting permission from the original creator? Or suppose that one writer misidentified a mushroom that causes some readers to get violently ill before the book is recalled? Should all of her co-authors share that risk, or should the entire liability be borne by the author responsible for the error or infringement? (And should you buy insurance from the outset to protect against some of these liabilities?) These are questions you don’t want to answer on the fly, when passions are heated, or an expensive defense or settlement offer is pending. Rather, ideally you will agree at the outset how to deal with these issues so that if a crisis arises the resolution will be seen as fair and impartial to all.

3. How Can You Unwind the Arrangement?

Often the hardest thing to agree on is the exit strategy, what to do if things sour and one or more collaborators want out. The key question here is when and how can collaborators walk awayand, if they do, what are the consequences? Answers vary from

• forced abandonment of the project, i.e., no one gets to continue it (rare and hard to enforce); to
• allowing each of the authors to extract their contributions and proceed however they wish (with no future sharing or communal duties); to
• one co-author is entitled to continue the project on his own, with a duty to pay an agreed – or to be determined- royalty to his former partners.

The ultimate answer generally depends on why a party wants to call it quits and where in the process that happens: if it’s because she just got a job, had a baby or simply changed her mind, and the project is still in the early stage, the simplest solution is generally for that party to confirm she is abandoning the project and waive any claim so her ex-partners can continue on their own. If it’s a real falling out well into the process, that’s usually the toughest to work out, but will probably involve one or more collaborators effectively “buying” out the others. A good lawyer or agent, particularly one who’s already lived through a challenging separation, can often help co-authors agree on a reasonable solution they can all live with, in the unlikely event a dire breakup happens, and help write up that solution clearly and succinctly.

…

Assigning responsibilities, sharing benefits and burdens, and devising the right exit strategies are the biggest issues, but not the only ones. Additional considerations include:

• If there is a disagreement the parties can’t resolve, must they mediate and/or arbitrate, or can an aggrieved party go right to court?
• What state law and location will apply if there is a dispute?
• Are there restrictions (aside from those imposed by the publisher … which there will surely be) on a collaborator’s right to use the same characters, create a sequel, or be involved in creating related or competing works?
• Can a party assign her benefits or burdens to a third party, or is her collaborators’ consent needed to do so? (Typically yes.)

In short, there is both art and science in creating a contract that makes sense for particular individuals about to engage in a deliberate collaboration meant to create aspecific work of authorship. So before you and your compatriots launch yourselves into a collaboration, follow the old lawyer admonition and get it in writing!

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The post Successful Writing Collaborations: 3 Questions Co-Authors & Ghostwriters Need to Ask appeared first on Writer's Digest.

What kind of book do you want to write?

Why do you want to write this book?

Have you started writing already? Do you have any material or chapters for me to use?

What’s your time frame? When do you want the book in print?

Why do you want a ghostwriter or co-author for your book? And which would you prefer?

What kind of publisher do you hope to be working with? Do you want to sell your book to a traditional publisher, or self-publish it with a print-on-demand service?

Who’s the audience for your book? Why will they want to read it?

Have you thought about how you’d like to work with a writer?

What’s your budget for this project? (You may have to explain that ghostsare paid up front and don’t work solely for a “share of the royalties” or other future income.)

During this conversation, take careful notes and consider whether or not you’re interested in the project. Does the person sound like someone you can work with? Is the subject something you can write about? Listen to your gut—it’ll often tell you what to do.

For more on ghostwriting, check out Kelly James-Enger’s article:
How to Be a Successful Ghostwriter

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The post Ghostwriting: A Checklist of Questions to Ask Potential Clients appeared first on Writer's Digest.

A: According to guidelines set forth in the 2008 Writer’s Market, ghostwriters charge anywhere from $50-100 per hour for “as told to” projects and $30-115 per hour for no credit pieces. “As-told-to” ghostwriting often nets you less money per hour because you get other benefits—such as a byline, an advance and a split of the royalties (up to 50 percent). But if you’re willing to skip the byline and future earnings, you can act as a work-for-hire ghostwriter and charge more on the front end.

“Whatever is negotiated needs to be done, agreed upon, on paper and signed before work commences (or continues–if already started),” says Robert Brewer, editor of Writer’s Market. “Included should be an estimate on the amount of time or pages expected; how many re-writes/revisions are expected; what constitutes a finished product; how and when payment will be made; and conditions under which the price might escalate.”

If charging by the hour makes you (or your counterpart) nervous (Hey, I know I said to write about my first time at Yankee Stadium, but I’m not paying for the three hours you spent catching a game in the bleachers no matter how much ‘ambiance’ it added to the writing)—you can simplify it by charging per page. When translating hourly rates to pages, it comes out to $4-$25. I know that seems like a large range, but, like with any contracting job, the more experience and success you have, the more you can justify charging a higher price.

Realistically, the best bet for your first time ghostwriting is probably to negotiate a specific page count and price per page, so both you and your counterpart know the total amount that will exchange hands when the book is finished. (Negotiate royalties separately). As you become more comfortable with the process, you can adjust accordingly.

Brian A. Klems is the online managing editor of Writer’s Digest magazine.

Have a question for me? Feel free to post it in the comments section below or e-mail me at WritersDig@fwpubs.com with “Q&Q” in the subject line. Come back each Tuesday as I try to give you more insight into the writing life.

The post What Should I Charge to Ghostwrite a Book? appeared first on Writer's Digest.