Secrets of a Ghostwriter II

Warning! What follows is shameless self-promotion …

… but I can’t help it. I’ve gotten in a bunch of pre-publication blurbs about SECRETS OF A GHOSTWRITER, the first trade/textbook that teaches the skills, theory, and politics of ghostwriting and freelance editing, and I simply have to share. I’ve never experienced such uniformly glowing response to any [...]

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I’ve recently run into the same situation with two novelists: their protagonists were neither sympathetic nor likable. I didn’t want either one to come out on top. In fact, I wished both characters would simply drop dead somewhere around the end of chapter two–which was essentially what happened, because I stopped reading.
I am a ghostwriter; [...]

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Eerily, I’ve had the same conversation with a series of aspiring novelists in the last month or some, to wit: novels are not movies. They’re about people, not events. Even when they’re wrapped around a real event, they’re about the people experiencing the event, not the event itself. Nonfiction is about events.
Furthermore (the discussion goes [...]

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I fully intended to finish the week with a newsletter and a blog, not necessarily in that order. But the best-laid intentions often go askew, and here I am at week’s end with neither blog nor newsletter accomplished.
It’s been a week of meetings: phone meetings, meetings in coffee shops, meetings in bookstores, meetings in restaurants. [...]

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I finished it.
The last draft of the 2nd edition of Secrets of a Ghostwriter training manual is done and off to four different editors for input and corrections. Already gotten some feedback from them, so had to share.
From Wendy Elliott-Scheinberg, Ph.D., California State University, Fullerton (CSUF):
This book is wonderful. I can definitely use the nonfiction [...]

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I love critique groups. I go to two, sometimes three, all the time. I enjoy the camaraderie, the exchange of ideas, the push-and-pull of writers in a community.
But a critique group is not a substitute for an independent editor.
Critique groups are there to give us encouragement, to point out obvious flaws, to brainstorm ideas, to [...]

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Have you noticed that every new networking site almost immediately has a handful of “experts” and every new marketing idea comes complete with someone offering a free teleseminar or webinar that primarily offers just enough information to make you want to sign up for a costly series of seminars?
I got three of them this morning [...]

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I have a lot of things to get done today: ghostwriting classes to schedule and promote, editing clients to work with, a Monday morning desk to be de-papered. Here’s the problem, I also have cats.
There are no words to describe how difficult it is to type with a cat on my lap. He wants his [...]

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Ran into another person today who did not understand the difference between authors, writers, and ghostwriters. Allow me to elucidate.
The AUTHOR of a piece is the person whose name is on the cover, the person whose ideas or story forms the foundation of the piece. Traditionally, the WRITER was also the AUTHOR, but that is [...]

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Had such a great class session today (fiction substantive editing), I want to do some rooftop shouting. Alas, my rooftop is neither sturdy enough or quiet enough.
Ergo, I blog.
While I admit certain things are still missing from the textbook because I am STILL in the process of doing that rewrite, nevertheless the class worked. Plot [...]

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