Confessions of a Ghostwriter

‘Rewrites?’ This was the first I’d heard of this. ‘But the publisher has signed off on the manuscript. They’re happy with everything.’

‘But it’s not right. I need to change things. It’s not printed is it?’

‘I have no idea, but I doubt they will want to make any more changes now.’

That was the moment when Geraldine started to cry and my wife managed to tear the wide-eyed, open-mouthed girls away from the show and into the kitchen to make tea. I felt a bit like crying myself. One of the best moments in the book-writing business is the one when the editor accepts the final version of the typescript and agrees to send it off to the printers. The weight of months of work and uncertainty lifts from your shoulders and there is a brief period of elation (not to mention a cheque in the post) before you have to start worrying about whether the shops are going to display the book, the papers are going to review it and the public are going to buy it. Geraldine’s panic was crushing my moment.

I had got to know her well enough over the months to be aware that if she had decided on a course of action she would not be easily diverted; going on the game and changing your gender are both decisions that require uncommon degrees of grit and character. It seemed best to go with the flow for the moment, at least until she had calmed down a bit.

‘Are you wanting to work on it over the weekend?’ I asked, casting a quizzical look at the overnight bag.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we have to. I’ll need to find a bed-and-breakfast or something so we can work during the day.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ my wife interrupted from the door, the girls peering round her skirts, ‘you can stay here. We’ve got a spare room.’

Maybe it’s something to do with female instincts, but as usual she was ahead of me in reading the situation. Geraldine did not want to rewrite the book any more than I did. There had to be some other reason for her arrival out of the blue at the other end of the country from the streets and kerbs where she plied her trade, and we just had to wait for it to emerge. As she relaxed into the evening, with the help of a bottle of wine, she opened up with a new story about a murderous pimp who she had thought was the love of her life but who was actually making her life a misery. He had arranged for her to be evicted from her flat and was now pursuing her with a gun.

‘Sounds like you’ve got a sequel to your book,’ my wife suggested as we washed up after sending an exhausted Geraldine up to bed, which was a relief since we’d signed a two-book deal with the publisher and finding enough material for follow-ups was nearly always an uphill struggle. It may be true that ‘everyone has a book in them’, but most people definitely do not have two, however much the publisher’s accounting and sales departments may hope to the contrary.

A million books in an African warehouse (#u49355ab9-e449-59aa-9004-c5d82d1826e8)

‘You must fly down for the launch of the book,’ the Minister boomed, ‘I insist. The President will be there. It will be a great day. There will be food and speeches. I will make all the arrangements for you.’

I didn’t really want to go, but there was no arguing with him. Most clients don’t even admit that they’ve used a ghostwriter; they certainly don’t want to invite him or her half way across the world to the launch party. In most cases they don’t even let the ghost know that there is going to be a party. Once the book is written and delivered the ghost normally slinks back into the shadows and moves on to the next project, allowing the client to bask in the glory of being a published author. The Minister, however, was a man who enjoyed the limelight so much he wanted to share it with the whole world, which was one of the reasons he was such an endearing man.

His extremely efficient assistant made the arrangements through the embassy in London and a business class ticket was delivered to the house by a driver. I didn’t even bother to ask about accommodation arrangements because my previous trips had shown that the Minister was the most hospitable of men. He would have thought of everything. Often when you arrive at the borders of a country other than your own you need to provide evidence of where you will be staying. When your ticket has been arranged by someone like the Minister everything is different. Someone would have had a word in the ear of the airport officials, money or other favours would have been exchanged, minders would be waiting to take me to an SUV with darkened windows. It had happened like that every time I had been to see him during the writing process.

The launch of the book was held in a government office that I hadn’t been to before. The building must have been designed in colonial times and had a suitable air of faded grandeur, befitting a distinguished literary event. A feast had been laid out for guests on trestle tables and groups of sofas and armchairs had been clustered around the room so that politicians and business people could huddle and whisper, their conspiratorial conversations occasionally interrupted with roars of laughter and outbreaks of back-slapping. There were surprisingly large piles of books which the guests were helping themselves to, flicking through the pages in search of their own names or those of their rivals.

The arrival of the President momentarily overshadowed the Minister’s flamboyant act as host and newly published author. The pecking order took a few moments to readjust before everyone was comfortable once more.

The Minister made a speech and graciously acknowledged his ghostwriter in a remarkable display of modesty, honesty and openness. The President also made a speech praising the Minister. Conversations then resumed as one politician after another stood to tell the room how much they admired the author of the book and how exciting it was that his ideas on how to lead Africa to future prosperity were now set down in print.

The Minister smiled and nodded his appreciation to each of the speakers in turn, but he was also working the room as they talked, shaking hands and hugging everyone who came near him.

As he moved closer to where I was standing I overheard him accepting praise from a woman swathed in colourful traditional dress, a Rolex glinting on her wrist.

‘Your book will be a bestseller,’ she assured him.

‘Yes, yes,’ he grinned his acknowledgement, ‘we have a million copies printed up and ready to distribute. We want every child in Africa to have a copy.’

I caught his eye over the lady’s shoulder and smiled. I knew that it was his knack for positive thinking and dreaming big dreams that had got him where he was and might yet get him into the presidential palace. The book, I knew, was just one more step in the process of establishing himself as a future leader. Eventually he reached me and clapped a mighty arm around my shoulder.

‘Are you having a good time, my friend?’ he asked. ‘Are you glad that you came?’

‘Yes, very good,’ I said. ‘How many copies have you actually had printed?’

‘A million,’ he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

‘I thought we’d agreed to start with a couple of thousand,’ I said, still not sure whether to believe the bombast.

‘You know me,’ he winked, ‘I like to think big. I believe in the message of the book. I want copies in every school in Africa.’

‘You’ve actually had a million copies printed?’

I was trying to imagine what a million copies of a book must look like. Even if he was exaggerating and he had only printed a tenth of that figure it would still mean crates and crates of books.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Where are they?’

‘My brother has a warehouse near to the town where my mother lives. You remember going there?’

‘Of course.’

I had spent a pleasant weekend with his mother, a sunny, smiling woman who spoke no English and passed her days happily sitting in the shade inside the walls of the family compound, preparing food to be cooked by her daughters and shouting abuse at the goats whenever they strayed amongst her vegetables. I could imagine the delivery lorries arriving in the tiny town, coating the watching locals with dust from the unmade roads. In his home area the Minister was like a king and the warehouse full of books would be one more jewel in the crown of his glorious career.

As far as I know the crates are still in the warehouse.

Discovering ghostwriting (#ulink_b86a1ad0-1576-58f3-9a6b-ea9bf1c47ccc)

My first invitation to ghostwrite came from a management guru I was interviewing for Director magazine, the house journal for the Institute of Directors, which is a sort of gentlemen’s club for business people housed in one of those grand buildings in Pall Mall.

The guru and I were driving back to his gleaming white Surrey mansion in his powder blue Rolls Royce, having had a very long lunch and feeling exceedingly mellow.

‘You’re a writer,’ he said, apropos of nothing.

‘Yes,’ I replied, liking the sound of that phrase.

‘I’ve been commissioned by a publisher to produce a series of business books,’ he went on. ‘I’d like to do them because it’s good for business, but I don’t have the time. Why don’t you write them for me? I’ll get the glory and you can have the money.’

I was insulted for about five seconds and then I saw the potential of what he was offering. The books already had a publisher. It was definite money. All the information was in one place and would be relatively easy to collect. He was an interesting man with a lot to teach me. When I reflected a little further I realised that I had actually been doing much the same thing in journalistic form for clients of public relations companies, writing articles and speeches on their behalf. This was merely a protracted version of the same process.

I accepted the job and it went without a hitch. There must, I thought once it was over, be millions of people with books in their heads who don’t have the time, ability or inclination to write them themselves. I just need to find them. That was when I hit upon the idea of taking a small ad in TheBookseller – ‘Ghostwriter for Hire’ – in the hope of reaching every publisher and literary agent who had a client with a great story but no time or inclination to write it themselves.

The story of Stumpy (#ulink_99fb2aeb-bd5f-58e7-9bcf-3b53e94c037d)

My ghostwriting gene must have developed early. I didn’t realise that what I was doing was going to be my life’s career but at the age of around 11 I decided, with the help of my best friend, Tom, to write the life story of Stumpy.

Stumpy was one of many mice that I had bred in the school nature society (a society of which I was voted President, I’ll have you know, largely because my mice bred with greater speed and ferocity than anyone else’s), but he was different, born with only three functioning legs. I guess this could be described as my first ‘misery memoir’.

Every bit of free time we could squeeze from the dreary daily routine of boarding school, Tom and I would hurry off down the corridors to the school library – a permanently unpopulated, panelled room with floor to ceiling shelves of unread books, looking out over terraces to the valley beyond – to write another chapter of Stumpy’s autobiography … Even then I should probably have been taking more fresh air and physical exercise.

The glamour model versus the ‘arbiters of taste’ (#ulink_326ff71c-0ad6-5cba-b822-11afdb9ae767)

‘I’ve had a call,’ the agent said, ‘from the managers of a model called Jordan. She’s looking for a ghostwriter for an autobiography.’

‘Who?’