"Write something for someone else's signature or credit, to their specifications and satisfaction. Make sure your “author” won't get in trouble for having you do this." And with that the Ghostwriting project is off!
While many of my peers are taking on short academic papers and speeches (perhaps even a resume or two), I'll be heading out into more disreputable waters. Like Vincent Lardo assisting the deceased Lawrence Sanders in writing "his" novel McNally's Dilemma, I too am venturing into the world of creative ghostwriting. The main difference between Lardo and myself is that my author is still among the living. My particular ghostwriting will follow her current authorship activities; that is to say I will be assuming the guise of a struggling female poet in the cruel, post-modernist conurbation of Madison, Wisconsin. Can I mimic the syntax and intuition of an up-and-coming young bard? Can I assume the unique voice of this generation and fool even the most learned of literary critics? Will I win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry (which would really be irksome, considering I expect to come in eighty-seventh on the list of people thanked in my author’s glorious anthology)? Am "I" the greatest rhymester of all-time?!? Tune in next week and find out when “Ghostwriting! A Tale of Poverty, Exploitation, and Soap…” (or PES) airs! Same time! Same channel!
(This, kids, is what we in the radio/movie industry call a ‘teaser trailer.’ Can you say that? Very good! These ‘trailers’ build-up hype to the highly anticipated release of something that inevitably flops; case in point, Snakes on a Plane. Anyway, if you’d like to share your personal ghostwriting experiences here in equally dramatic fashion, I’d love to read about them. We’re ghostwriters united! Our stories must be told!)
