Ghost Writer

The Least Supernatural Superhero of all!

I wonder if the creators of Ghost Rider were thinking of ghost writers and just got carried away. Probably not, but that would be a great origin story.

This week a friend asked me to look at a sales pitch they'd written for their new venture. They expected an edit, a touch-up, but I did a heavy rewrite, seeing what it needed and knowing they wanted it done rather than to me teaching them how to fix it. I did the rewrite and sent it back. When my friend thanked me, I said it was my pleasure and explained my strange affinity for ghost writing.

That same day a colleague asked me to review a piece they had written for one of our bosses, a technical document with legal ramifications that my colleague had written well and exhaustively. I thought about condensing it down to a page or two, but again, my colleague doesn't want writing instruction or the destruction of their writing, so I created a summary, in my colleagues language and tone, to attach to the report. They liked that and the boss will be grateful for the brevity of the summary and the ability to refer if needed to the thorough report.

Later this week I made a presentation about the community center in which I have my office. It's anonymous writing showing the organization instead of the writer. Pretty much the opposite of what I do here which is all too much about me.

(I'm reminded of a Clarkson chemistry teacher who told my class, "you'd have an ego too if you were as good as me." I like that line a little too much.)

Ghost writing is a practice in humility, empathy, and compassion. It deemphasizes the self. And it turns out that ghost writing is most of what I do in revising my own work.

Last night I typed yesterday's Morning Pages. The process was ghost writing because by evening I had made of myself a different person than I was that morning. I felt compassion for the morning writer and was delicate with his feelings as I deleted sections and transformed his piece. I worried about changing the direction he'd chosen but trusted I was doing right by him, the piece, the process, and the audience.

In that piece I said writing is and isn't magic. Ghost writing is the same. The handwritten draft was nearly 1,200 words. Typed, it was 1,061, many of which had not appeared in the handwriting. Then I revised to make it shorter. Two and a half passes later it was 867 words, each pass done by the ghost writer I had become by evening by separating the words on the page from my self and hearing them as an audience might.

Writing manuals mark a division between writer and editor, but I like thinking of it as neophyte and ghost writer. The neophyte has passion and but lacks the skill to translate the passion to artful words on a page. The ghost writer has those skills and works to disappear, to make it seem as if the neophyte wrote every word in the final draft. The ghost writer feels devotion to the neophyte and to the craft.

In this way the writing, the writer, and the ghost writer are all transformed for the better. It's no flaming skull and burning motorcycle, and Nicholas Cage is unlikely to play me in the movie, but as origin stories go, it's not bad. It needs maybe a touch of revision. I'll get on that.