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Alcoholic jihadi-hunters, TV stars in the bath – confessions of a ghostwriter

Ewan McGregor in The Ghost Writer - Cinematic Collection / Alamy Stock Photo
Ewan McGregor in The Ghost Writer - Cinematic Collection / Alamy Stock Photo

The pews in the tiny, remote Welsh chapel were so cramped that the coffin in the aisle pressed against my leg. I was in the front row, sandwiched between the deceased and a Traveller wearing a satin tracksuit. I had no idea who was in the box. Neither did said Traveller, who had taken me to the funeral and who nonetheless had a comforting arm around the weeping widow on his other side.

He was a prize fighter, and had been invited to the service because his father once sold a horse to the dearly departed. In his Adidas top, he looked out of place. In jeans and a T-shirt, so did I. Not for the first time that month did I find myself wondering how I’d got myself into this predicament. Previously, I had sat at the top table of a gypsy wedding and then been pulled over by police on the way home driving a borrowed 4x4 in which I later found a small but lethal-looking crossbow.

The explanation: I am a ghostwriter, and in that instance I was collecting material to write the memoir of the Traveller, a well-known man. He isn’t one to sit through hours of sofa-bound interviews, so instead I suggested we “hang out”. The month I then spent in his raucously anarchic company was exhilarating, and a little scary at times.

For a long time, ghostwriting was publishing’s dirty little secret. There’s a little more transparency today – witness the buzz of publicity surrounding Prince Harry’s memoir, culminating in his ghost, JR Moehringer, writing a piece about the job for The New Yorker – but in truth, that case is still an aberration. We ghosts are called into service by publishers, agents, and sometimes individuals who are intent on self-publishing. We help “writers” and “authors” who can’t write or author. Sometimes we are there to mop up a mess already made, but more often, the credited author has never committed a word to paper. Generally, we remain faceless, but if you know where to look, you can find us buried at the back of the books we create, cryptically thanked in the acknowledgements by the people who purport to have written it all.

The process differs from book to book. Generally, ghosts are approached by publishers and, if the terms are agreeable, a meeting is set up to make sure the subject and their ghost “connect”. Terms vary, but the standard deal sees the ghost receive a fixed fee, split into several payments, in exchange for an 80,000-word manuscript (the standard amount) and a legal agreement to sign away any rights to the work they create. Some ghostwriters manage to negotiate a split of royalties. Some manage to get their names on the cover, credited as “co-writer”.

Then begins the process of interviews. If I’m ghosting a 300-page memoir (again standard), I like to have around 20 hours of interviews recorded, which have to be transcribed, indexed and then planned into chapters. Autobiographies are simple; they run chronologically. “Concept books” are harder; these are books in which a central idea is illustrated by anecdotes from the author’s life; they might be modelled on the likes of David Jason’s The 12 Dels of Christmas or Craig David’s What’s Your Vibe. (I’m not suggesting either Jason or David used a ghost themselves.)

Unusually, JR Moehringer, Prince Harry's ghostwriter, has written about their work - Hulton
Unusually, JR Moehringer, Prince Harry's ghostwriter, has written about their work - Hulton

Generally, concept books are commissioned by publishers because the faux-writer has already published a traditional autobiography that sold well. They strike fear into the heart of ghostwriters, because the celebrity author will only have a vague idea of how to make the “concept” into 300 pages, as will the publisher – and it will be left to the hapless ghost to sweat out the details. I once wrote a concept book for a TV personality based on her sketchy beliefs about spirituality and metaphysics. By the time I finished, I had constructed an entire pseudoscientific rationale for life after death.

Some ghostwriters see their work as purely transactional, little more than a glorified transcription service. Others get little input from their subject, and the result is prose full of overly detailed descriptions and explanations of historical points, cribbed from the internet, reworded and smuggled into the resulting manuscript. Personally, I like a more considered approach. I try to get under my subject’s skin, teasing out as much as possible – deadline permitting, of course. A six to eight week turnaround is not uncommon, and under those constraints, after interviewing and planning, the process becomes a tortuous stress-fest of panic and insomnia.

Generally, though, when there are reasonable amounts of time and input from the subject, ghostwriting is an engaging career. I’ve written more than a dozen books for various individuals over the past decade, and each presented their own challenges, such as the gangster who committed a high-profile crime and who was clearly covering for an accomplice when he recounted the woolly explanations of how he got away with it. I had to point out the gaps in his story, and come up with a more plausible alibi for him (yes, there is plenty of artistic licence in memoirs).

Some have been plainly insane, like the chain-smoking, alcoholic British jihadi hunter who joined a Kurdish militia and delighted in showing me his photos of dead Isis fighters at our initial “get-to-know-you” meeting. I declined that job.

Others are merely lazy, like the social media influencer who got bored with her own concept book after a couple of hours and told me to “make it all up”. And then there are the impossible ones, such as the reality TV star who wandered off midway through one of our interview sessions at her flat and clearly forgot I was there.

After I heard the bath water running, I sat quietly in her kitchen for 30 awkward minutes listening to her sing and splash around in the tub. Eventually she came in, dripping wet, covering her modesty in a tiny towel, and exclaimed: “Why are you still here?”

The worst subjects, however, are the ones who think they’re actual writers. These subjects insist on reviewing and editing the manuscripts, which must be “locked” at all costs. I learned that the hard way several years ago after completing a memoir for a pop star. He insisted on taking my carefully crafted words and adding 15,000 words of his own garbled nonsense, which then had to be carefully reworded. It was as if I’d had my lounge painted by a professional, and then a four-year-old with a crayon scrawled all over the walls.

But for the most part, despite the odd hiccup, the relationships formed between ghosts and the people they write for are convivial. Indeed, they must be: a good ghostwriter needs to get inside their subject’s head to understand what makes them tick. Trust needs to be implicit. Consequently, subjects can become valued friends.

Nothing has given me more pleasure than watching the tragic orphans for whom I once wrote a book grow into successful, well-adjusted adults, or the troubled victim of a grooming gang whose memoir I penned become a brilliant mother and a valued first-responder.

People literally trust us with their lives. Earlier this year, I was asked to begin a project with a well-known personality in the food industry, on the understanding that I’d get paid either when a publishing deal was finalised or by the subject when he self-published, as he was in a hurry. He was a delight to interview, and full of funny and enlightening anecdotes – but he never told me why there was a rush to complete the book. A few months ago, he died. He’d been quietly battling cancer for several years. Whether his book will ever get published remains to be seen. But in the meantime, I am the custodian of his life, committed to text, recorded for posterity.