Ghostwriting – The Writers in Residence

by Jill Amadio

Last week, I was sorely tempted to slip back into a non-fiction writing career that has sustained me when my mystery book sales faltered. I gave a proposed project a few hours thought. Then, I came to the decision that my ghostwriting years were definitely gone with the wind, as vanished as the ghost I had become.

Ghostwriting popped up in my life when I least expected, and it was certainly not sought. In fact, I was barely aware of someone writing someone else’s life story for them. It seemed the height of hubris both from the viewpoint of the writer and that of the subject. I believe I thought, when I first heard of ghostwriting, that if you couldn’t write your own story, then forget it.

However, during a particularly “dry” period when my finances were almost non-existent, I held my breath and agreed to at least investigate what was involved. I was writing a business column for Entrepreneur magazine, and one day, the editor told me that a reader called, asking if they could recommend a writer to write their business book for them

“What? Be a fake writer? And on top of that, write a whole book?” I squeaked. “No way! I hardly manage to squeeze out 3,000 words for my column. How can I write a hundred times that number? No way.”

“Jill, look at it this way. Approach each chapter as an article. Besides, it pays well.”

When the editor mentioned the sum of money I could earn, I no longer resisted. Ghostwriting, here I come!

Since then, I have ghosted 19 memoirs and enjoyed the process immensely. I met a fascinating group of clients who took me into the realms of several diverse worlds. I wrote books for a champion cowboy, a nuclear physicist, and just about everyone in between.

After I finished the business book and was telling a friend at the local TV station about it, she passed the word around. I soon received a referral that sent me to Hollywood to meet Ellie, the fourth wife of singer Rudy Vallee. She was one of those larger-than-life ladies who called everyone “Darling.” We clicked right away.

Ellie sent me to the Simi Valley Library, which had bought Rudy’s archives after he died. Five hundred boxes. I spent weeks delving through clippings, photos, contracts, reviews, personal letters, and marriage certificates. The material was rich with wonderfully intimate biographical pieces of Rudy’s rollercoaster life and career. The publisher decided that rather than following the usual process of hiding the ghostwriter, I should be named as the co-author of the book. A great and much-appreciated surprise.

During her book tour in Las Vegas, Ellie had lunch with the owner of the many taxi companies in town, who promptly contracted with me to write her own memoir. I interviewed many of the cab drivers and collected some surprising stories of famous celebrity passengers. However, the cab owner decided to only publish enough books for her immediate family and friends. Thus, those stories remain undercover.

Another memoir (each of the 19 I ghostwrote was by referral, happily) was more of a revenge publication against no fewer than a dozen attorneys for malpractice. My client owned a small business, which soon expanded into selling one of the nation’s leading entertainment devices. However, the clients had hired what she and her husband called “incompetent” lawyers. Soon, there were lawsuits initiated by my clients all over the place. The book was to name each one and detail their transgressions. I knew a little about the law and told my clients we needed to give those lawyers false names or be sued ourselves.

Some of the names we came up with included Mack E. Avelly, Mal Lingerer, Jep Ardy, Rack E. Teering, and an Ignorentia Legis (translation: ignorance of the law).

Several of the memoirs I wrote were written in the first person, from the client’s point of view. A favorite of mine was about Monterey, CA’s first policewomen in the 1950s. The lead female cop rode a Harley to patrol the streets and, occasionally seeing a fellow cop’s car outside another cop’s house whom she knew was working, discovered several love affairs taking place during her tenure.

One client hired me to write a mystery. She’d always wanted to write about a financial scam that victimized her father. It sounded boring, so I suggested we add a murder into the mix to jazz it up. She agreed wholeheartedly and asked how many murders we could include. I talked her down to two.

Some clients decide to write their memoirs after changing their lives. One of these was a model, international actress, and recently divorced mother of two who decided to leave her luxury life in New Jersey and move to California. I met her at her home, where she showed me the minivan they’d be traveling in for the cross-country trek. I was surprised that the SUV was pretty stinky compared to the shiny Rolls-Royce parked nearby. She said she wanted a completely fresh start. She got one when she met and married a California billionaire after arriving in Laguna Beach. Then she moved to Italy, where she bought a villa.

Before COVID struck and I moved back to Connecticut, I received a call from a cowboy in southern California. He had recently completed a humanitarian project: riding horseback across America from California to Florida. The mission was to raise money for an orphanage for disabled children. The book was fun to write, covering how he, the seven horses, and a one-eyed mule he needed completed the journey.

One memoir I wrote on my own was the life story of the first lady of aviation art. A British artist, Virginia Bader, ran a gallery of paintings on both coasts devoted to World War II scenes, dogfights, and heroes such as General Jimmy Doolittle, Air Vice Marshal Johnnie Johnson, and many fighter aces from both sides of the conflict. Her efforts helped establish the careers of the now top aviation artists in their field, such as Nicholas Trudgian, John Shaw, and Sam Lyons.

I wrote three other memoirs as my own client because I became fascinated with the subjects’ stories. One I was asked by the publisher to write about was Gunther Rall, the third-highest fighter ace of World War II and a General in the Luftwaffe. It was published in 2003 and continues sells worldwide.

by Jill Amadio

Teach a writing class? I have enough trouble getting myself to work on my next mystery, of which I only have one-third finished. However, I am working full-speed on my new career as a writing coach.

Westport, CT, has more than its share of elderly, I was told at the town’s country-club-style senior center where I use their gym. The executive director figured many of the members would love to write their life story if only they knew how.

Interesting, I thought, because I have been looking for a paying job. I’ve written four biographies under my own name and a few as co-author. My greatest contribution to assisting another person’s attempt to get their autobiography on the page has been as a ghostwriter. I’ve written 15 for clients. This is the kind of book you can write with no repercussions tied to your own fragile persona. No one can take potshots at you for you putting on the published page swipes or dislikes for certain relatives, remembered experiences that showed others as fools, or perhaps an opportunity to lay bare your absolute hatred of your cousin’s prize poodle. I do, however, urge a client’s caution, and I try to appeal to their good nature if they have one.

So, did I want to take up the challenge of teaching some old fogies like myself how to write their memoirs? The idea appealed to me. I had never taught anyone anything in my whole life. Well, maybe a few table manners to my kids. So, yes, I accepted the challenge to help anyone over 65 jot down their life story in presentable and publishable form.

Creating a curriculum was my first worry. What would I teach? The elements of style came immediately to mind. I’d want to know how to structure a book, create my personal style, and how to write down my thoughts and feelings. I’d want to know how to describe places and people, events and experiences that had made up my world since birth and were still occupying my psyche both physically and mentally.

For the first class, I asked my students to create a Timeline, a list of each year of their life with a significant note, and a few words to mark why it was memorable.

I decided that handouts were important because I had always loved receiving them at writers’ conferences, so I found Rudy Vallee’s timeline I’d created back in 1989, as well as a champion cowboy’s timeline that chronicled his trek across America from coast to coast on horseback. One handout was a list of 106 descriptive verbs I’ve used for years.

In addition to the Timeline, I also mapped out writing techniques and elements for the following classes. In addition to Structure, Style, and Context, I added how to write Characters, Flashbacks, Settings, Cliffhangers, Editing, Beginnings and Endings, Publishing, and Marketing. I became so enamored of my advice I began to inspect my own WIP and make changes. I dredged up a few tips and notes I’d taken at various conferences and thus was able to flesh out my curriculum.

An observation about the students. They were extremely keen to learn how to write their memoirs. It was clear some of them had been thinking about writing such a tome for a few years but had no idea how to do it. By the homework I gave them, i.e. the Timeline, they returned to class time and time again more enthusiastic than ever. I told them to always interrupt me any time with questions, hoping that my fear they’d forget them before the end of class was not apparent.

Among these senior students, limited to 12, were a school bus driver, a poet, an attorney, an ad saleswoman, a lady from Germany who escaped the Nazis, a couple of teachers, a financier, and an accountant. One gentleman dropped out after lesson #2 because he said now that he was about to describe his life, he found it too painful to do so. Another gentleman said he doubted he would continue because as a reporter, he was trained to write lean, and that was the antithesis of writing a book. I told him I’d initially experienced the same hesitation when I was first approached about ghostwriting. My editor at the magazine I wrote for said that a CEO had called asking for a referral to a writer for his business book. Before calling him back with a recommendation, she asked me if I’d be interested.

“A book? A whole book? No way!” I said. “I enjoy writing the 3,000-word articles for the magazine, but 70,000 words? Forget it.”

“Think of it this way,” the editor said. “Approach each chapter as an article. And the pay is really good.”

“Oh. Okay, I’ll do it.”

After that first book, I received many referrals and became a ghostwriter. A few people contacted me through my website, www.ghostwritingpro.com. One client, a banker, asked me to ghostwrite her novel about financial fraud.

“Hmm,” I said. “Sounds a bit boring. How about we add a murder to spice it up?”

“Yes! How many murders can we have?”

The publishing of that book inspired me to create my own Tosca Trevant mystery series while I continued to ghostwrite as my main source of income.

Back to my seniors’ class. The atmosphere was informal, friendly, and focused. I showed them several of my memoirs and said that although we only had eight hours in total with which to cover the subject, it at least would get them started thinking and planning.

By lesson #4, we all felt comfortable with each other reading aloud the homework. One lady was writing her memoir only for her grandchildren and refused to share it with us. But everyone else was eager for everyone’s critique. The lawyer fella incorporated funny poems into his memoir, and someone else brought us to chuckles with her descriptions of working in a donut shop as a teenager. The German lady brought us to tears with her childhood memories of fleeing the Nazis

That first 8-hour course was popular enough to be repeated, and later in the spring, I shall be teaching How to Write a Short Story or Essay. Luckily, when I lived in Laguna Woods, CA several of my stories were published in the community’s anthologies over the years, although I can’t remember ever writing an essay. Tips for my seniors, anyone?

Jill’s article was posted by Jackie Houchin