The Five Biggest Enemies of Being a Highly Successful Ghostwriter
Ghostwriters all of us are a peculiar breed. We’re the ancient wild Prezwalski Horse, the Blue Bird with burnished orange vest, the multi-coloured Betta with gills flaring when enemies threaten. And enemies we have, most notably and notoriously the mysterious, scary, beguiling axis of blockage known as Me, Myself and I. Private Enemy #1: …Is Me, Myself, and I, because it is the repressed spirit inside of Us who has shackled and bolted itself tightly to the wall of complacency or fear or gaggle of excuses that would make a goose choke. Geese truly choke? You must be sheeting me! I thought they only honked. But yes, it is You who are feeding Yourself subliminal messaging that is stopping you from unlocking those shackles and escaping the trap that (it turns out) you have laid for yourself. So herewith the keys to fly high into the ghostwriting sky…and soar! Private Enemy #2: …Is (for most of you) Your Online Personae, currently a toxic by-product of the Me, Myself, and I axis that hardly represents who you are, why you should be hired as a ghostwriter, what placing trust in You means, and where You can be seen and admired in all of your soaring glory. Indeed, what you currently have as your online personae may derive from that honking gaggle of excuses that often block your actions, you know: money, time, and you’re just not sure what to do — that may well be a by-product of your not growing up with a digital device sown to your hand. So here’s how you must present your online personae: Your Author Website …Is absolutely totally without any question of any kind whatsoever…the most critical portrait of yourself. It must display: Your catchy pithy clever wordiness or lack thereof. Your prior books ghostwritten or |with written and as illustrated by their vibrant book covers, Your book reviews, Your collaboration reviews, Your prior life if you’ve double-flipped to the present, and/or your ongoing life if you haven’t, and Most importantly, Your writing and life spirit. Because, when all is said and done, that last factor may well be the most important of all. As Exhibit A of what I mean in the flesh, go to SteveEgglestonWrites.com. Your Social Media …Is also critical, so do not let the triumvirate fool you. Your social media are the gales and winds and fury that lift you high into the sky, where your ghostwriting banner can be seen by all who dare to look into the bright, shining sun that’s (hopefully) their next book written in collaboration with You. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube – all must be resonate and glowing and seamlessly similar but different…as if deigned with the touch of your favorite interior designer. Here are mine, illustrating that for all of us our online personae is always a work-in-progress that rises and expands and blooms as we get smarter and bigger and the chipping away and stacking of the individual bricks starts to make a difference: Facebook.com/SteveEgglestonWrites (author only) Facebook.com/TheEggman411 (personal from which I recently broke off author only) Twitter.com/SteveEgglestonWrites (just launched author only) Twitter.com/TheEggman411 (again personal from which I even more recently broke off author only) Instagram.com/SteveEgglestonWrites LinkedIn.com/SteveEgglestonakaTheEggman (combined) YouTube.com: I’m still working on it! Private Enemy #3: …Is Your paucity of credited books, which makes it difficult for anyone to place confidence in Your ability to do the job at hand: ghostwrite their baby. It’s the curse of the ghostwriter that we often must sign Non-disclosure Agreements (NDAs) that bar us from disclosing our involvement as a writer on our books; but we must be self-preservationists, mustn’t we? For otherwise we’ve put ourselves out of business. So here are some magical “tricks” to this ghostwriting science-and-art that we pursue as a trade. First and foremost, ask for credit in your Writer’s Agreement or Writer’s Deal Memo. I stipulate that my book covers and all media should read be as follows: “Subject | with Steve Eggleston.” Take a look at the book cover for Conquering Your Adversities, by Dr. Kenneth Polke | with Steve Eggleston, which illustrates my meaning eloquently: If that is not in the cards for the Hiring Party, then so be it. But if you don’t ask, you shall not receive, right? And here’s a related suggestion, secondly and somewhat foremostly. Even if the Hiring Party doesn’t want to extend you the contractual right to have your name on the book, include a little proviso that states: “The Hiring Party shall have the right to include Author’s name on the book with the agreement of author if, after the book is written, it is warranted.” This little proviso at least gets the Hiring Party thinking about it, and from experience I can tell you that your contribution if significant enough will compel many HPs to offer to include your name, deservedly, with theirs. And you could say, it also gives you an incentive to do your very best so that the book when it garners your authorship credit creates confidence in people googling for ghostwriters and finding You. Private Enemy #4: Is Your lack of amazing book reviews from respected authors, authorities in the field, and readers. Of Conflicted, my debut legal thriller, now 10x New York Times bestselling legal thriller writer John Lescroart wrote this review (and thus landed on my cover): “Killer book. I loved every page of it…CONFICTED is a total winner on every level. Great courtroom stuff, great characters, great plot, narrative mega-drive and – in Dave Splatter, P.I. – a stand-alone hero for the ages.” How in holy you-know-what did I manage to get this review, without a traditional monster publisher behind me? I messaged John on Facebook and he, quite magnanimously, agreed to review it because Peter Miller was my agent. The power of this single review cannot be undersold. All ghosts when writing their own books should aspire to this, reaching out personally to anyone whose name matters. On
How to Find, Select, and Hire a Great Ghostwriter and Collaborator
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you,” said Maya Angelou, poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist. The story gestates inside your very being and stirs your personal holy ghost, refusing to rest as discontent rattles the chains of your soul. The story could be anything. It could be an inspirational memoir, a biography, an autobiography, creative fiction, non-fiction, a ‘faction’ (a mix of history and fiction), a legal thriller, a murder mystery or family drama, a how-to book about entrepreneurship, a novelette on leadership, the discovery of a cure of diabetes, a company’s brand or journey, or any combination of the foregoing, which would make it a blended hybrid. Download Your Bonus “How to Hire a Ghostwriter Checklist”… But there’s one small problem. When you look in the mirror, you don’t see an author. You see someone who’s never written a book. Maybe you see someone who’s never even attempted to write a published article or push out an informative blog. You’re neither poet nor writer nor singer nor activist nor typist. That’s not what you do. Your life has taken a different course, away from the digital realm of keyboards, keystrokes and monitors…and because of it, you have something burning inside of you that must be told. You may be a businessman or businesswoman. You may be an athlete or housewife or familyman or wealth manager. You may have risen from poverty through the thorns of hardship to great success, or you may have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth that you turned into gold – or truth. You may be a soldier or bodyguard or protector. You may have been weaned on academia or hardened from potholes on the bumpy streets of rock n roll. You may be a politician or priest or mason or producer or financier or seer or doer acting on stage or screen or Ted Talks. You may love things or hate things or want things a different way and just wish wish wish the world would be a better place. You may be the kind of person who lives by a personal code of ethics devoted to reporting what breaks through rather than what breaks down. You may be magical or practical or march for justice just to rail!!! You may even be the greatest orator or writer on planet earth – but you are the one-armed man or woman hanging wallpaper in a windstorm and don’t have the time to write a book whose agony throbs inside you. For all of you, ghostwriters were created. They were conceived to solve the exact challenge you face or from which you, thus far, have shrunk or faltered. The ghostwriter, in his/her small way, might well be your personal saviour. My mind leaps to an example. The talented writer Lou Aronica has worked in publishing, editing, and authoring all his life. He’s a man who knows books and somewhere along the way he went into business with the legendary literary lion, Peter Miller, the lit agent/manager behind 1500+ published works of fiction and nonfiction (and also my own lit manager on a new Dion Fossey book). Peter’s client Sir Ken Robinson agonized from an untold story about educating children that he desperately wanted to tell. So Peter connected the two and a bestseller conceived in collaboration, The Element, was born. The same thing has happened to me, most recently with Dr. John Burd, a biochemist renowned for co-founding DEXCOM. He yearned to tell his story on the discovery of Lysulin, a natural supplement that helps cure diabetes but has been resisted by the collusion of the ADA and Big Pharma. His partner Rob Vickery Googled for a ghostwriter and found me via The Books Factory (where I’ve hung an author’s slate). The three of us conceived, researched and wrote, In Search of Natural Support for Diabetes Wellness, and by the time you read this article, hopefully this important book will be rocketing up the bestseller charts. So here you are, like Sir Ken or Dr. John and what you need is someone who will relish the act of penning your story under your name with or without his/her own credit. What you now desperately need is a ghostwriter who will unchain your melody and let your story sing to all those who will listen. And you know that the time has finally arrived, because you’ve put aside the budget and you’re ready to pull the trigger…but gosh, what do you do? How do you hire, find, and choose a ghostwriter? Enter the inimitable and omniscient Checklist. Without the Checklist we would be bobbing about in a sea of darkness with neither sextant nor stars to guide us. And like every serious endeavor, there are things that must be done and things that should be avoided. So here I offer you what I would describe as the Essential Checklist for Finding, Hiring, and Selecting a Great Collaborative Ghostwriter, whether for yourself, your friend, your spouse, your family, or your client. What is a Ghostwriter? Starting with the basics is always the best place to begin, because we all possess uninformed assumptions, because in today’s world we all live in narrow silos of information, and because certain realities are nuanced. Technically, “a ghostwriter is hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are officially credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, memoirs, magazine articles, or other written material. In music, ghostwriters are often used to write songs, lyrics, and instrumental pieces. Screenplay authors can also use ghostwriters to either edit or rewrite their scripts to improve them.” As a practical matter, however, a ghostwriter means more than the Wiki definition. In today’s world of easy self-publishing, a ghostwriter is – first and foremost – a collaborator. H/she will collaborate with you to get your life story and thoughts to paper or your prose to narrative. By
Telling Your Story in a Modern Age…Give Wings to Your Essay, Short Story, Novelette, Novella, or Novel
Not all readers are the same. Like every person is different, so too is every reader. Some are too busy to read much. Except on a long vacation or flight, they don’t have the time. Others have a little bit of time, but only so much. An occasional evening, a lazy Sunday, regular commuter flights. Then there’s the insatiable who can devour a whole opus like weightless caramel corn, reading between every crack in day or night until the last page is turned. More to reality, we all go through phases; sometimes we read a little, sometimes we read a lot, sometimes we’re all over the place. And of course there’s the matter of times and places. These beget norms, and what people did 60 years ago following World War II, or even 25 years ago before the internet revolution, simply doesn’t translate to today’s world of multi-tasking, infinite choices, and throbbing impatience. The normalcy of today finds people reading shorter prose in less time with more distractions than ever before. Attention spans for books are shrinking, simple as that. So why, if you have a story to tell, must you either write the full-blown novel or pen nothing at all? The brilliant news is that the dilemma is a false one, of the excluded middle. You don’t have to write the great American or British novel to tell your story. Not every book need be a Tolstoy War and Peace or tomb on the life of Michelangelo. Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose The Scarlet Letter earned him reverberating accolades as “the great American novel,” loved to write short stories. So too did John Steinbeck, whose The Grapes of Wrath won him the Pulitzer Prize; yet his novella, Of Mice and Men, is equally powerful and enviable. You needn’t be Tolstoy or Hawthorne or Steinbeck to express your ideas, though you might well follow their lead. Instead of a novel, express your inspiration in a short story or novella or, God forbid, an essay! The inimitable Kurt Vonnegut was smitten with essays, writing many in his career, not the least of which is “Here Is a Lesson in Creative Writing.” Future writers of the world — download it today! Or follow the path of the inimitable Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose fame came from his essay, “Self-Reliant.” Or Nora Ephron, who between novels needed only “A Few Words About Breasts” to buoyantly make her point. Like readers, authors also have busy lives, especially first-time writers or entrepreneurs or doctors or scientists or celebs or influencers who are itching to tell their stories but are busy in life doing something else; it is they who especially need a helping hand. For those among you, do not despair! Many options are truly available. Sandwiched between the novel and essay are short stories, novelettes and novellas. In all, five classic options exist in which to divine your creative tongue, and there are many professional writers out there, myself included, who live for the day an email arrives seeking our collaboration on something highly unique yet less than a full-tilt boogie novel. But before you do that, give some thought to what you have to say and what your ideas might become. Below are parameters by length and other less tangible variables. Let them all flow through your leafy dendrites before you make the final call on how you would like your story told. Essays, Epistles, Flash Fiction & More If it’s under 1000 words, it’s an essay, though it might be an essay by a different color and gait. An essay typically unfurls a focused discussion of any topic, from concrete to abstract, that expresses the author’s personal viewpoint. Guys like Michel de Montaigne and Charles Lamb are cited in Wikipedia, but few will know them unless drilling into the footnote of an Ivy League lit text. Better known are E.B. White, with his “Once more to the lake,” Virginia Woolf and her “Death of the Mother,” or even Robert Ebert, the late great Chicago Tribune film critic, who penned “Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” Also residing on the 1000-word-or-less medium are the more esoteric epistles or letters or missives, the latter reserved for the angry at heart. These are usually aimed at a group of specific people who share common credentials or beliefs, and often start with a pre-emptive warning, an “Open Letter to…” I remember reading Roy Childs, Jr.’s “Objectivism and the State, an Open Letter to Ayn Rand,” in which he parsed no words for the provocative Ms. Rand with her man qua mans and A is As. Or there’s “Reflections on Writing,” by Henry Miller, taken from his book of essays, The Wisdom of the Heart. Another must read. As a mostly modern incantation, nor should we forget so-called “flash fiction” pieces that might also be described as “very short stories” or humorously as “short short stories” (humorously because brevity shuns repetition) or postcard fiction or micro-fiction…or whatever name fits around a narrow-waisted tale that might be told around a campfire or tea or brewski in few words, but yet still contains the essential features of a little book. And then there’s the literary legend himself, the late great Ernest Hemingway, who told the shortest story ever, maybe at Harry’s Bar in Venice, California. Lore has it he collected $100 after betting $10 per person to ten enraptured friends that he could draw tears from his short story of merely six words: “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” Whoever would have guessed you have so many choices to choose from to launch your story into orbit around the literary sphere. The Short Story The classic short story runs between 3500 and 7500 words. Assuming there are 325 words on a typical paperback book page, that’s 11 to 23 pages. On a single MS Word page using size 12 Times New Roman font and spacing at 1.1, this translates to between six and 13 pages fully typed. That’s the length because,
Put Brita on Your Xmas List — The Emperor is Naked!
Brita is my new hero. Brita Water Filters clean ordinary tap and stream water through a patented water filtration system that has been around for decades. For a twenty-spot, you can buy a fabulous pitcher or carry-anywhere thermos. https://www.brita.co.uk/. I’ve seen Brita’s for years, but until recently, I can sadly say I’ve never owned a pitcher or a thermos. As conscious as we are about supporting local and buying organic, for the nearly three years I’ve been in England, we’ve used plastic, bottled water. Finally my wife put her foot down and said, “Steve, bring home a Brita today, please.” Meanwhile racked with guilt, I do a little math and figure out much toxicity we alone have caused in this time. Our family average is about 5.5 (2 adults, 3-4 children, 1 cat, lots of guests). Each person conservatively consumes about five bottles per day (we refuse to cook with tap water either, for the deleterious particles often found in old pipe systems like ours). “Alexa,” I say, “what’s 5.5 x 7 days a week?” “Steve darling,” she replies, “didn’t you take your maths? That’s 38.5.” I give her a wink. “Of course, but what’s 38.5 x 5 bottles per day?” “Oh sweety, you really should be able to do this in your head, what with all of those books you write. Try 192.5.” Wow, I’m thinking, that’s a lot of water bottles, i.e., plastic, used in one week. “Alexa, what’s-” She reads my mind. “-192.5 x 52 weeks in a year is 10,010.” “You’re telling me our single little family uses over 10,000 water bottles per year? That’s, that’s–” “Criminal?” she says. “Alexa, how could you–” “Well Steve Eggleston, you don’t stand alone. Lots of people are colluding with you. Great Britain has a population of 63.786 million people. 63.786 x (10,010 divided by 5.5 = 1,820 bottles per person) = 116,090,520,000.” “116 billion bottles of plastic are being used every year in Britain alone?” “Stevie, baby, you should really be ashamed of yourself. You are truly part of the problem, aren’t you?” “Wait a minute, Alexa, you didn’t discount the people who already use Brita.” “How many people do you know that use water bottles rather than Brita, Steve Eggleston, you always mounting your high horse? Really, how many?” “Well, Alexa, first, I’d, I’d… like you to watch your tone, okay? And, and, and, well, I can think of one. Our friend Philly Decker. So there.” “Haaaaaaaa. One, Steve? Only one? Well, Mr. Eggleston, aka The Eggman, why don’t you do something about it? Like do a post and suggest that everyone on the planet buy a Brita for the one they love for Christmas?” “Wow, Alexa, what a great idea. How much plastic would that eliminate in a year?…Alexa, how much plastic would that eliminate in a year?” “I don’t know, Steve Eggleston, why don’t ask your smarty pants readers to do the maths?” I do. Someone informs me there are about 7,346,235,000 in the world. I do a wag (wild ass guess) and divide that figure by 4 = roughly 1.75 billion. If that equals the number of families, we’re wagging 1.75 billion x 10,000 bottles of plastic a year. Cut it in half on the assumption that half the world isn’t into bottles or consuming in western amounts, we get 1.75 billion x 5,000 = 3,500,000,000,000 bottles of water consumed per year. How much plastic is that? One helluva lot of plastic, that’s for sure. Then I’m reminded by a wise and witty friend, Gabriel Dayan, that Brita is not the end-all, either. Says Gabriel: “However, if there is a serious water quality problem, higher performance technology would be advisable. It’s worth looking at reverse osmosis, alkaline ionization, distillation, and whatever else is out there, and of course filter out pseudoscience in the quest for the best water cleaning system.” Brilliant! — Gosh, can you believe The Eggman called the emperor naked? But yes, that’s what The Eggman does. Bounce to my website at SteveEgglestonWrites.com to get an email notification of all that I publish. My articles are largely supported by readers like you, so please share the missives you like, add me on Facebook and Twitter, and toss a quid, dollar, or Bitcoin into my wishing well at Patreon, Paypal, or my Bitcoin Scan Code (coming soon). You might treat yourself and your friends (it is Xmas) to any of my recent books: Conflicted (sole author), Conquering Your Adversities (with Steve), and/or The Fast Diabetes Solution (with Steve).
Steve Eggleston – Professional Cybersecurity Freelancer for Hire
I’ve co-written one fictional novel in the cybersecurity thriller genre with an ex-MI5 agent, called Flatline: The Day London Went Dark. This is the extraordinary tale of how special agents from Britain and the United States come together to prevent World War III (or Global Cyber War I), after amassed Zero Days are triggered following the theft of a stolen Israili dooms cyber-weapon. In addition to writing novels about cybersecurity, I write extensively as a ghostwriter for United States cyber-security firm Windtalker Security, LLC, which provides leading software and services to the global legal market. All the White Papers on this site are mine. WindtalkerSecurity.com. Here is a click-thru sampling of the articles posted thus far, with many in the pipeline: Article #1: “FOR HACKERS, CONFIDENTIAL ATTORNEY COMMUNICATIONS ARE EASY PREY” (Click Here to Read the Whitepaper…) Introduction: “Ask hackers why they attack law firms, and their reply — to riff on bank robber Willie Sutton’s famous quip — would no doubt be: ‘Because that’s where the secrets are.’” “FBI Warnings: Criminal seeks hacker — to break into international law firms…” “A Russian cybercriminal has targeted nearly 50 elite law firms, including four in Chicago, to collect confidential client information for financial gain.” “Hackers broke into the computer networks at some of the country’s most prestigious law firms, and federal investigators are exploring whether they stole confidential information for the purpose of insider trading…” It reads like a monologue for Jimmy Fallon’s late night show, except these quotes are dire warnings from the American Bar Association’s official website, posted almost a year ago under the worrisome title, “CYBERSECURITY: ETHICALLY PROTECTING YOUR CONFIDENTIAL DATA IN A BREACH-A-DAY WORLD.” (Click Here to Read the Whitepaper…) Article #2: “SHORE v. JOHNSON & BELL THE CATASTROPHIC POTENTIAL OF CYBERSECURITY LAPSES AT PROFESSIONAL SERVICES FIRMS” (Click Here to Read the Case Study…) Introduction: Johnson & Bell, a venerable Chicago law firm of 100 plus attorneys had been sued for inadequate cybersecurity, i.e., for failing to protect the security and confidentiality of its thousands of clients and former clients. Curiously the plaintiffs, two former clients who had paid the firm a mere $30,000 in fees (peanuts for firms of the size and stature of Johnson & Bell), claimed no actual damages — and claimed no negligence in the underlying legal representation they had received. But they didn’t need to, at least according to the averments made in the originally sealed but later unsealed complaint. The book of remedies permitted much more, and that’s what plaintiffs went after: injunctive relief, notification of all the firm’s thousands of clients, of the law firm’s below-standard data and info-security systems, and disgorgement of all legal fees earned during the two-year period of inadequate cyber-security (measured by the profits pocketed by the firm for insufficient budgeting and spending on cybersecurity). (Click Here to Read the Case Study…)
Steve Eggleston – Hiring and Working with a Professional Ghostwriter
The Spark It begins with a spark. You have an idea that deserves a book. It could a memoir, a fictional story that would make a good read, maybe even a movie, a real-life injustice that cries for exposure, or simply a way to establish yourself as an authority in your chosen field of endeavor. The Writer for Hire You’re not a professional writer or you’re so busy you need help to write this book. You scour the internet, delve into the google ads, consume the organic search results, and go onto Upwork. When the process is done, you’ve hired yourself a ghostwriter to collaborate on your book.
Steve Eggleston – Professional Memoir Ghostwriter for Hire
How to Write Your Memoir and Share it with the World: Interviews… Plot Lines… Getting Started… The Grind… Writer’s Block… Finishing Your Draft… Polishing Your Draft… Hiring an Editor… Submitting to an Agent… Self-Publishing… Slice-of-Life… Chronology of Events… Cast of Characters… Narrative Style… Point-of-View… Tense… Working Title… Length of Book… Chapter Outline… Chapter Titles… Research… Slice-of-Life… A Memoir is literally a slice of life – your life. It is not an autobiography, which is your whole life, cradle to, well, just before the grave. Nor is it a biography, which is someone else’s life, often cradle-to-grave, and not your own.
Seychelles Commissioned Financial Article for City A.M.
