What is ghostwriting?
Ghostwriting is just telling your story. It’s as complicated and as simple as that. You may think it’s complicated, I can make it simple.
In amongst what has happened to you, in amongst the life that you have led, is your story. It could be a memoir or a fantastic business idea, you might know the secret to something, or there could be an incredible piece of research you need to share with a wider audience.
Whatever it is, you probably suspect ‘something’ could be done with it, but you’re not sure how or what; which is probably why you’re looking up ‘what is ghostwriting?’ in the first place. But here’s the only thing you need to know: whatever your story, if you want to tell it, don’t let anyone stop you. Maybe you don’t even need a ghostwriter – and maybe I shouldn’t say that. However, I do believe that what your story means to you is the important thing, and whether it is written just for you alone, or written for the world, whether it becomes a bestseller, or whether you leave it in a box for future generations to find when you’re gone, it matters.
Your story matters.
This week has seen too many stories cut short, lives snapped shut in the blink of an eye. And it has brought back memories... and these memories become stories about what happens when hearts are broken and families shattered.
One Monday, I went to work at the University of Stirling in Scotland. I had a day of lectures and tutorials ahead of me. Nothing unusual happened, but, as I left, a colleague from another department asked if I would mind covering their classes two days later. On the 14 March 1996, in the first class of the day – a day I shouldn’t have been there - I chatted to undergraduates about the world as the world decided to come crashing in.
To begin with, there were the sirens. Constant sirens. Then helicopters. Non-stop. So loud that they filled the seminar room and we all wondered what could possibly be happening, given that the most exciting thing to occur round here was when a swan skited onto the campus lake while you ate your lunch.
Then, a departmental secretary came in and whispered to me, ‘ask them if anyone has a child at Dunblane Primary.’ She didn’t want to say the words. So, I asked, not knowing why I was enquiring, but no one did, no one had a child there. I remember that she started crying at that point. There wasn’t the instant access to news on phones that there is now, and the confusion of the students made me take the woman out to the corridor to find out what was going on. She still couldn’t tell me. Someone else did.
There had been a man with a gun.
They knew that.
They thought someone had been shot.
They thought it might be a child.
I went back in and told the class and we were all stunned at the possibility that one child, just one child, could have been attacked in somewhere as safe as their school. To think of that poor mum or dad who had dropped off their son or daughter - maybe only ten or twelve years old, who knew? – and thought they would be safe for the next six hours. It didn’t bear thinking about. By the end of the morning, we all knew. We all knew that there had been terrible things, unimaginable things, happening only a few miles away. Not one child, not one mother, not one father, but 16 five-year-olds and their teacher were slaughtered that day, shot by a man with a grudge, shot by a man who thought the best way to get his revenge was to take what the community held dearest.
I went home to my own baby, to our tiny little house that was safe and full of love. I’d listened to the radio all the way back, for an hour, hearing stories that didn’t make sense, but had to be true, because I’d heard the sirens and witnessed the tears.
This wasn’t really something we had the language for, so we relied on tired old religious tropes where ministers were wheeled out to speak about things that we couldn’t really verbalise. Scotland grieved, as did the world, but Scotland also acted. There was an inquiry and there were also huge restrictions placed on the private ownership of handguns. Those who were killed then, this week, and in all the school shootings in between, have had their stories cut short.
To be honest, it feels almost petty to be linking this to ghostwriting, but what I want to say is this: you have to take your chance. You have to say what you want to say when you want to say it. Too many people don’t get that chance – they are silenced by life, by abusers, by the restrictions their own experiences place on them when they should be flying high on their achievements.
Take that opportunity when you can – even if you just write your own words in a notebook now and hide them in a drawer, you never know who will read them one day and be glad that you took the time.
I’ll say it again - your story matters. It’s time to tell it.