A Ghostwriting Story – Part Two

In part one of this series, I introduced you to the genesis behind the securing of a ghostwriting contract. Part two takes us through a few of the trials and tribulations as the book progresses.

I left off with the story being at about mid-stage in December of last year. The cycle worked like this:  We would meet and discuss direction and what to include. At these meetings we would discuss ideas in terms of content and sidebar extras as well as which charts, graphs and images to include.

What I had figured out in the process at that point was that we had different ways of working a project. I tended to want to pretty things up and come up with sidebar elements and other things that were not content/textual in nature. I desperately wanted to see what any given chapter would look like. While this helped me out quite a bit, it didn’t really move the book forward.

After one of our meetings in January, anxious to see progress, I put all of the existing chapters in a single document with all of the formatting consistent. Again, this was to give me a feel for the book. A secondary consideration in my mind was that this would assist us in the inevitable revisions that were on the horizon.

The next set of revisions came in from the client as individual chapters. Ugh. My worst nightmare. I was so very afraid revision versions would get mis-saved or meet some other which-GD-folder-is-it-in kind of fate. As it turns out, this was a good call.  I set up a folder for all of the chapters based on the revision date rename of each. So far, so good.

As of our meeting last week, the client feels a solid rough draft should be ready by the end of May. So where we are at is that he has gotten me several chapters and I am in the process of revising and re-writing.

The question a lot of you may have is, “Aren’t you or the client upset that the project has gone so over deadline?”

That’s a legit question and what I will say is I’m not at all upset, and neither is the client. We have forged a wonderful working relationship. I couldn’t have asked for a better client to work with. He is smart, he knows his material, the subject is unique, he is flexible and laid back as the day is long. He is open to changing things in the interest of an end product that is the very best it can be. I don’t have the sense that he will drag it on for an indeterminate length of time.  I know that when it is complete, it will be something we both can be proud of and I honestly hope it makes him a ton o’ money. As it is, there are discussions of a follow up book as well as the possibility of collaborating on some other writing projects.

The takeaway from this story is that a ghostwriting partnership can really work if both parties have the right attitude and the same goal in mind.

I’m a lucky guy.

Posted by: George