Sometimes, it’s difficult to let a project you’ve been working on so diligently to not only be scrutinised, but to now be handled by someone else. In an email exchange I simply said this:

You’ll need to be ready for someone else to handle the baby for a little while – I always have to help my clients be prepared for this as sometimes they can get a bit touchy about their art!

It’s true. But one of the things I have found helps is to clarify what a ghostwriter is, by using an example most people are quite familiar with. And that is the role of the music producer.

Having worked in music studios myself back in my younger years when I was working a music career (and now tinkering as an amateur producer), I learned quickly that the role of the studio producer is absolutely integral. They can essentially make or break a project. A good producer doesn’t just tell you to do the take again, or listen out if you’re going out of time, but also helps you to work with your reference material, aids you in your research, brings their own ideas, and helps guide the project to keep it focused. An album would be nothing without a good producer. Essentially, a good producer makes the project even better than it could have been. That’s what a ghostwriter does – but for books!

While a good editor will tell you to go back and write it again, or get rid of a chapter, or take out whole swathes of work you poured your life into, they won’t necessarily bring you ideas, help you in your research, work with you on reference material, and help you keep the book focused. That’s my job. I don’t just tell you how to write better but I help you to write better. I bring my own ideas and listen carefully to what it is you’re wanting to achieve with the book – and then I keep you focused.

Sometimes, this process can get a little irritating, I admit. You might feel like I’m taking over. Sometimes, you need to let a ghostwriter just take over for a bit. But a good ghostwriter is not taking over the project, what they’re doing is providing what the project needs to steer it into a direction that not only matches your original vision, but also matches what the market is looking for. This is why a ghostwriter is much more than an editor but at the same time not the original writer of the project. The big ideas are not mine, they are yours. You remain the writer, but I take on a producer role.

George Martin was often called the “fifth member of the Beatles” because of his creative contribution to their music as a producer of several of their albums. The unique role a producer plays in a group / artist’s career is well established. Ghostwriters are simply the same thing for writing. That’s why you can also think of them as “book coaches.” So, if you’re stuck, need help in focusing your writing project, and need creative input that helps you see your original vision come to light, it might be time to get a ghostwriter involved – before you work with an Editor.

My dad has a pretty great hi-fi set up. I remember with much fondness the days, when I was in my preteen years and early teens, when I would go with him to various upscale hi-fi stores and join him in his endless hunt for the best speakers, the best tape player, the best vinyl set up, and the best everything sound and technology (and his budget) could allow. We would crowd into these dark and mysterious demo rooms, and sometimes he would bring his own record with, and he’d ask them to pop it on, and then we’d sit down and he and I would just listen to the music and critique the quality of the sound.

“What did you think of that one, son?” he’d ask me. And I’d pretend I knew the answer. “Yeah dad. Really nice bass on that amp.”

He would stop and think. “Hmmm. But it can be better.” Then he would turn to the attendant. “Let’s try those Mission speakers again… and maybe afterwards the Celestions.”

I would listen along with him, and every time he would make a comment or ask me about my thoughts, I would learn some more. Eventually I’d get a little courageous and ask the attendant, “Can you fiddle with the EQ? Maybe put the top end up a bit.” My dad would smile, or not say anything – the latter making me feel like he thought it was a good idea and approved of my suggestion; that he was taking it seriously, and so should the attendant.

That night at my folks, while eating my dinner, I reminisced about these times with my dad, as I still often do, as they were good times when I felt he and I were connecting over a mutual passion, that being music – and actually that we were doing far more than just connecting over music but were actually connecting like father and son. I suppose my passion and love for music really comes from him. From an early age he exposed my brother and I to all sorts of music – and he would tell us things about what we were listening to and what it meant, and what made the sound good, and educate us without making it into some sort of lesson. I would always listen eagerly and learn.

In later years, my dad would get music DVD’s and we would watch them together late into the night, commenting on the performance, the sound, where this or that group is these days, and what made or makes them so good.

I cherish all these times deeply.

So that night I thought to myself that I would scratch through my dad’s vinyls and pull out some of the old classics I grew up with as a kid. This was a time in my life, as I think most people in the ‘quarter’ part of their life go through, when you start trying to link your present identity back into your identity as a kid. During your teenage years you go through a time when “new” is always better – your music is better than your dads, your generation is smarter and cooler, and that old generation doesn’t really know much. You go through a time of breaking out of your childhood, and everything you do is an effort to do that. That breaking out is healthy, but sometimes it’s done in an unhealthy way.

But then you start to settle and you start to try and link who you have become with who you always were – you start to appreciate the fact that your dad and mom’s blood also runs through your veins. As a young man, you start looking for that connection to your dad again – and you find that somehow that connects you to yourself better. So you go back to the things that you find do that for you.

So this was a time in my life when I was, without actually realising it, beginning to collect the music of my childhood. The music I would hear on the radio when I was six years old. Nostalgia eventually becomes an old, reliable friend. Phil Collins, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Pink Floyd… these were the names my dad used to have on vinyl and tape. I would mix them with some of my own favourites from my childhood – Aha, Tears for Fears, and other music from the 80’s. 

I had, probably a week or two before this, bought Paul Simon’s classic album, Graceland on CD. (Yes, this was during the CD days.) So this night, as I rummaged through my dad’s vinyl collection, I was presented with something I had never seen or heard before: Paul Simon’s The Rhythm of the Saints.

I knew a fair amount of Simon’s music at the time. I knew there wasn’t just Graceland, but there was his whole original stint with Garfunkel, and “that album” with that song “Allergies” on it (a song I liked as a kid because I grew up with intense allergies). But what was this? I looked at the copyright and read the insert. So this was after Graceland? Well, why had I not actually heard about it?

Graceland was a big deal growing up, because I grew up under apartheid. Simon coming to South Africa and recording with black musicians was something I remembered hearing the grown-ups speak about with strange, hushed or excited tones. I never understood why my uncles and older cousins spoke about it like they did until I got older, of course. But the point is simply to state that I knew all about Graceland – but this The Rhythm of the Saints album was something I had never heard about before.

I was soon to discover that not only had I ever heard about such an album, but never in my life had I even ever heard music like it. From the very first bar of the album – military-like, marching band drums that are soon coupled with what sounds like over a dozen more pulsating drums in the background… (the song is “The Obvious Child“) I sat dumbfounded at what I had just discovered. You could lead music melodically with percussion? (I’m a guitarist.) While I’m sure I had thought of it before, I don’t think I had ever heard it done quite so extraordinarily. 

It’s the sound of it that makes all the difference. Somehow, Simon managed to instantly create a sense of mystery and beauty through sound and melody, wrapped up in lyrics that completely and utterly described my frame of mind and the sense I was feeling about my own life that evening.

Sonny’s yearbook from high school
Is down on the shelf
And he idly thumbs through the pages
Some have died
Some have fled from themselves
Or struggled from here to get there
Sonny wanders beyond his interior walls
Runs his hands through his thinning brown hair

The song often repeats the line, “Why deny the obvious child?” For me, the obvious was that I was was also going to get old, and it didn’t matter what I thought about it. It was happening and it would happen, and I would, in my own way, become my dad.

When track 2 hit I remember physically standing up and laughing, staring out the sliding door to my left at the beautiful summer night sky and its immortal stars. Why was I laughing? Because it was brilliant. I Can’t Run But is, tonally and melodically, one of the most original songs I’ve ever heard. I finally found something in music I had been looking for, and which I still struggle to find today: something entirely original.

The Rhythm of the Saints’ brilliance is not only its compositions, which are outstanding, but the way it connects you to something deeper and authentic in such a simple way. As an idealist – a born ‘romantic’ in the classical sense – my life is often made up of intense longings that only us artist-types probably really understand. I want to feel connected to life, not just sailing on its waters; intimately intertwined with others and the earth and the universe and God Himself. It’s not transcendence. It’s not that I want to experience something ‘otherworldly’. It’s more that I want to truly experience the world – I want all of life in its most authentic, intimate form. In short, I want to completely devour Beauty itself; be wrapped up in it. The mystical interests me not because it might take me out of the world but because it might finally put me truly inside it.

Paul Simon, I think, gets this. Somehow he managed to translate it into his music. From Graceland onwards he found a way to create music that takes you not to another world but to the world as it is – as it really is. Some artists try to do that by making you face the grim realities of life. They make you face sadness, loss, and despair. Others try to remain more positive. But Simon… somehow Simon actually does the thing that artists and musicians and writers try to do. He makes you feel sad and happy all at once. He taps into joy and sorrow all at the same time, and through doing so, puts you into the world as it really is: beautiful. Of course, sadness and sorrow isn’t beautiful, but the point is that “joy always comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30.) Simon makes you hopeful. He makes you look at the world and see that beneath all the pain and difficulties there is still beauty and mystery. He makes you acknowledge those longings you felt as a kid and realise they were, and still are, real.

And that’s why Simon’s music has, since then, shifted my world. Every time I listen to The Rhythm of the Saints, a strange feeling of contentment fills me. I realise that, perhaps, the longings of this life are precisely the point. I see once again how the ordinary things of life are actually the things designed to connect me to God and to others. I see once again the beauty underlining every relationship. I am able to remember what matters: the people in my life, especially those that are close to me. My marriage is not just a marriage, but it’s a real relationship with a real person who I really love and who really loves me. I connect again to the real, the authentic, the true depth in life.

I don’t know how Simon does it, but he does it. Even his later albums – like his new In the Blue Light do it. Perhaps not as well, at least for me, as The Rhythm of the Saints, but somehow Simon figured it out and didn’t ever really lose it. Some artists have that one album or one book that does it. Simon managed to continue to do it.

It was Paul Simon’s birthday a few weeks ago and I started writing this then as a tip of a hat for his birthday. (It’s probably ended up being more of a hat tip for my pops though!) He has recently said he is retiring from music. In explaining why, he says that, “When I finished that last album, a voice said ‘That’s it, you’re done.'” I think he is probably right: there’s only so much of this you can do before you just start repeating yourself. Somehow, when I listen to Simon I get the sense that it’s not about him but about the music and the connection to life it brings. That’s the kind of thing I would love to emulate in my own art. For me, I hope that somehow I can do what he did musically through my writing – that somehow others would get that sense of connection to life through my writing. It’s not about me being a brilliant writer, it’s simply about bringing that connection to people; giving them something that does that for them. I’ll then feel as if I’ve done my job and fulfilled my call. 

I’m really excited this week to be speaking at the Christian Writing Fair at Rosebank Union Church in Johannesburg. When I first heard of this event and received an email asking me to speak at it, my response was, “Well, it’s ’bout time.” I’ve been waiting for something like this for years. While I’ve been to some other writing fairs and conventions in South Africa, this is the first that I know of that will explore the Christian call in writing – and do it well!

It’s going to be an honour to hear from fantastic writers like Leslie Leyland Fields, Dalene Reyburn, John Gilchrist, and industry pros like Peter Velander. I’m also excited to get to meet a fellow South African fantasy author, Joan Campbell, who has been part of organising the event and who trains writers and publishers all over the world. (Have a look at her books at joancampbell.co.za). There’s going to be plenty here in the day’s line-up to chew on. So I’m not just excited about speaking, but also about attending and learning!

My workshop on Saturday will be about how to write more engaging and relevant blog posts. Many people think blogging is dead. Social media has, admittedly, taken over much of the space that blogging once had. People will rather post on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram than write a full-on blog, because blogs take time and commitment. But that’s only created more opportunities for actual writers to shine, as it’s become easier to find who the truly good writers are.

But that’s not all. I’ll also be exploring how the Bible can help writers discover their unique voice. In fact, this is the first way in which you can actually write good blog posts and engage better through not only your blogs but also your books and email lists and other communication that you send out. Many of us haven’t explored the full implications of what this one verse means:

Romans 16:22

“I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord.”

That one verse changed my life, and I’ll share why, in hopes it will help encourage and inspire anyone who feels called to this awesome task of writing.

If you want to join me for that, see you at 10am this Saturday (3 March). See the full programme here. There’s going to be some great stuff – Trevor Hudson exploring our calling; Bruce Dennill interviewing Joan Campbell and Mtutuzeli Nyoka on writing fiction; Lisa Casson going through the ins and outs of blogging; Peter Velander telling us about his forty years in Christian publishing. Really, this is fantastic, and I’m so encouraged it’s finally happening.

For more details and to book yourself a spot, visit christianwritingfair.co.za.

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

SAIR is about indie authors. It’s the first time I’ve seen something that’s purely about indies, which was really cool. It was great meeting new people who do what I do – and completely understand the challenges! Here are the key take-aways from the event for me, which are relevant for any writer in South Africa.

1. You can do this thing

After meeting several authors and publishers at the event, who have been quite successful (a relative term, I admit, but we’ll explore that in more detail below) I was left thinking: Well, I really can do this. And I don’t have to do it alone anymore. There’s something about being around pros in the field that rubs off on you. Overall, I was left encouraged.

But I was also left challenged. Authors need to support each other in this country. We can’t complain that readers don’t support us as much as they actually could if we’re not even keen to support each other! A vibe around local authors starts with the authors themselves.

2. It’s not about the money

This came up again and again, but there needs to be clarity as to what this means. When people say, “Don’t get into this writing thing if you’re keen to make money,” I suspect they mean that you generally won’t make tons and tons of money. Well, making tons of money is different to making a sensible living. This isn’t mentioned often enough when this discussion comes up, even on blogs and so forth. One is generally left with the impression that anyone can make some serious cash in this business (usually you see lots of that on the Internet) or that one is going to live their life in the gutter forever (so you should only ‘write for love’). I don’t think either of these are true, generally speaking.

I’m not really about making tons of money, but I am keen to make a sensible living, and after this weekend I’m sure one can, especially after asking Rachel Morgan, (Creepy Hollow, Trouble series) an author who manages her entire writing business from end to end, how things are looking financially for her. Writing your own books for a living is a long-term career plan. It doesn’t happen over night. I’m convinced that it takes persistence and growth and a sensible goal, not a goal with shining lights and money like dust. When we have a sensible goal we can enjoy a sensible living, and have a real career in writing.

3. We’re on the cusp of something new

I enjoyed David Robbins‘ opinion on the future of publishing. Robbins is a veteran in this field, and hearing him speak of how excited he is about the opportunities writers have today with self-publishing and Kindle and the printing opportunities and social media, etc., was very encouraging. That – coupled with the success of Carlyle Labuschagne and a discussion with traditionally published (and very successful) author, Gareth Crocker (Journey from Darkness, King) – left me very amped.

4. Get on Kindle

I took my books off Amazon for a while as there was an issue with the royalties (South Africans could only get 30% royalties). I figured, after Paypal fees and FNB fees, I was really getting nothing, and it was better selling directly from my website. But David Henderson of myebook.co.za showed me where I was going wrong on the platform, and I’ve set it up and now get the proper 70 percent royalties. Stoked about that. Check out Henderson’s post: South African Authors – Should we give a damn about self-publishing on Amazon.com?

Thanks to Carlyle and the organisers. Looking forward to it being even better and bigger next year!

I think the real reason for the lack of support, however, is due to the lack of a decent community and vibe around indie authors. That sort of thing has to start with the authors themselves, I’ve realised. Which is why I’m so grateful that author, Carlyle Labuschagne (author of The Broken Trilogy, and others) has started the SA Indies Rock (SAIR) Book Festival, which kicks off for the first time this Saturday. The festival includes a bunch of workshops with some very interesting guest speakers, and an awards ceremony in the evening. From 2pm it’s open to the public where you can come meet some fantastic local indie authors (details below).

And all that is just fantastic.

I’m excited to be there. Janet Wallace from the U.S. is one of the guest speakers and she will be speaking on “Thoroughbred Marketing & Branding in a Hybrid World”. Wallace is the owner of Social Deviants, which specialises in social marketing for authors and entrepreneurs. Other speakers include filmmaker and successful writer, Gareth Crocker; award winning author and publisher, David Robbins; and David Henderson, founder of myebook.co.za.

I’m also going to pitching my sci-fi ghost story thriller, The Butcher’s Shadow, to a panel of six publishers. I’m nervous and excited about that and am very keen to hear some honest, professional input.

Best of all, the SAIR Book Festival is all happening in Johannesburg. When I first heard of it I thought, “It’s probably happening in Cape Town.” That’s where all this cool sort of stuff happens. So what a great surprise!

Where: Modjadji House
Florida Hills Roodepoort
Johannesburg Area – South Africa

28 March 2015 from 9am – 9pm

Here’s who you can meet from 2pm:

Carlyle Labuschagne
Jo Watson
Rachel Morgan
Annette Kinnear
Dave de Burgh
Lea Cherry
Addriene Woods
Joan de la Haye
Dave Robbins
Monique Snyman

I’m not on the official list, but I’ll be there. So if you want to meet me too, well just look out for me

Tweet about it. Use #SAIR.

But those of you who were enjoying the weekly updates of The Butcher’s Shadow serial are asking (and wondering) “What happened? Are we ever going to see what the heck happens?” The answer is yes. With renewed vigour and inspiration, here are my plans for the next twelve months in writing:

1. Finish The Butcher’s Shadow (due the end of this year)

There’s still a killer on the loose! And things are starting to look weirder and weirder for Shakes. So let’s wrap this case up by year-end, shall we? Read the first nine chapters if you haven’t!

2. Finish my complete revision of my book Single within the next month.

I’m almost there. I’ve thus far managed to edit down the original manuscript from 90,000 words to 58,000 words! My goal is to edit it down to 50,000 or less words. It’s amazing how I’ve learned, since 2004, to say things more clearly! The original work is ultra-verbose.

As its title suggest, Single (I might give it a new title) is about how to enjoy your singleness as a Christian. Marriage isn’t the be-all and end-all of our existence! I’m also going to look for a publisher for this book.

3. Finish my book Holy Sin within the next three months

“Holiness for losers, washouts, and other people who don’t cut it.” That’s the subtitle for this book and it pretty much sums it up. All that’s left for this one is an edit and then a perusal by pastors and those I respect to give me honest feedback and their theological concerns. I’m also going to look for a publisher for this one.

4. Begin writing my next instalment in The Rise of the Kings (and finish next year)

It’s high-time I write the sequel to When Twins War and get busy with my five-book fantasy series. This is a series I’ve been working on since I was a kid – and it needs to come to life!

With a rich and layered fantasy world akin to the classics, When Twins War mingles traditional Western fantasy with middle-eastern adventure and African folklore. It’s something of a mix between The Lord of the Rings and Arabian Nights, with an African edge.

Buy this on Selz
Sell digital downloads on Selz

5. Begin planning for a sequel to Treasure Island (still in concept stages)

Yes, that’s right – a sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Treasure Island. Since I became a fan of Monkey Island when I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to write a piratey tale. I’m thinking of bringing a supernatural twist to it. That might make some fans of the original upset, but it might make some others interested! We’ll see. One thing that Stevenson’s tale always lacked, in my opinion, was a good ole ghost ship!

Will I manage?

Well, it’s good to set goals. These aren’t impossible. When I consider how much writing I’ve actually done this year (ghostwriting for clients; collaborative writing for Cornerstone Church’s resources) this is possible. But motivation is always another story – especially during Winter! Now that it’s Summer, things are rather different!

All “copywriting” really refers to is the act of writing copy (text) for the express purpose of advertising and marketing a product. It’s “copy” because it’s not something that gets attributed to anyone. You don’t get a brochure and then see a little author bio at the bottom! Or “by Ryan Peter” at the top! It’s not journalism!

Copywriters work in different fields, however, and as a result do different things. A copywriter at an advertising agency is usually involved in coming up with clever slogans or taglines, or perhaps even the lyrics for a jingle. Copywriters in marketing, however, may be tasked to create content for the web (a company’s website) or for promotions (emails, radio or TV commercial scripts, sales letters, media pages and so on). The line here gets a bit blurred between public relations (PR) agencies who usually do the same sort of thing, although PR’s roots are in journalism. The basic idea with PR was that a PR agency would use a journalist to interview their client or come up with a story angle that would be fed to the press and therefore get the company into the newspapers or magazines. This is a press release. The press can use the copy outright or just use the info in the copy, it’s entirely at the liberty of the publication.

But these days PR is now heavily involved in social media and online marketing, meaning it writes copy for companies for their websites, campaigns and so on. It’s not just writing news pieces but doing the whole shebang. This is why copywriters have become something of a mixed bag. Your copywriter is now creating Facebook posts and Tweets and is also hired to manage those social media pages, which means they now interact with the company’s clientèle, something which would probably have never happened before. Copywriters are also now being used to write PR and blog posts for a client, to increase their search engine optimisation (SEO) on the Internet. (This means that people can find a company more easily on the Internet.)

Because a great deal of online marketing is also now about writing good content with blogs and so on, ghostwriting has become a bit blurred with copywriting. Many popular blogs are actually written and run by ghostwriters, even though the blog claims to be the work of a particular individual. Experts in their field find they don’t always have the time to write, so they’ll hire ghostwriters to do that for them. (It’s still the expert’s thoughts and insights, it’s just that someone else is spending the time doing the actual writing). Ghostwriters in this field need to have some journalism skills so they can understand what the expert is about and the expert’s topic, which may be quite technical.

And there we have it. My core business is ghostwriting, but I call myself a copywriter as well because that’s where I started and I still do a lot of that – writing content for clients’ websites and so on. Along the way, however, I’ve been heavily involved in journalism and PR. As you can see it’s all so mixed now that a writer needs to be able to do pretty much everything. The Internet has changed things in a big way! But, in many ways, we’ve actually just gone back to the way of the scribe, who in ancient times even used to do accounting for their clients!

I’ve had many people recently ask for help writing a book, so I’ve started this little blog series to outline the process. We’ve covered the first step. Here’s the second step for book writing.

Brainstorming

Sit down with a piece of paper or your iPad, or whatever it is you like to use to make notes, and start putting down everything that you know around the book’s topic and everything you would like to have in your book. Because you would have already established why you’re writing your book, you would have established a theme, purpose or the book’s main topic.

I mean everything. This doesn’t have to be ordered, it just needs to be recorded somewhere. If you’re writing fiction, begin putting down some ideas you have for characters, some scene ideas (more on this below), anything that pops into your head. Maybe you know what your main character is going to look like? Well, begin to put that on paper. Does he have a scar on his cheek? Well, add that. Then start thinking why he has this scar. Maybe his evil nemesis cut his cheek in a row when they were kids? Well, we’re starting to build this character and even a plot line for your book.

If you’re writing a non-fiction book, put down everything you know and every reference you can think of. You might have read a book that influenced you greatly in the topic. Write it down. Write down the chapter or passages that influenced you. Write down everything you know or would like to know – so everything you’re going to research. Put every insight, thought or question down that you can think of.

Questions are a big deal. With non-fiction books, you’re usually looking to answer someone’s questions in the topic you’re handling. Write down every question you have (or had) and every question someone might ask you. These questions (perhaps not all, but most of them) are the questions you’re going to be answering in your book.

Some people get frustrated here because they’ll say to themselves, “But how am I going to put these thoughts and ideas together?” or “How am I going to put all these scenes together?” Don’t worry about that now, all you’re doing is brainstorming your book and the sky is the limit at this stage.

For fiction

If you’re writing a fiction book, you want to brainstorm these specific ideas:

•  Setting (A fantasy world? Chicago, 1938? An island? World War II?)

• Main characters (What do they look like? What accent do they have? Are they married? Will they never get married? Etc.)

• Scenes

Maybe you’ve got a vivid scene in your head where your main character is fighting a giant goat-headed eel that’s just appeared out of a sewer in New York. Well, jot this one down. But maybe it doesn’t relate to another scene you have where your hero is kissing his girl slo-mo on the edge of a building and in the background the whole city is tumbling to pieces. So what? Put them both down. There are two awesome ideas right there.

• BASIC plot

You want some ideas as to your plot, but you don’t have to have everything sorted just yet. If all you have is, “A guy walks into a bar and is able to blow up bottles just by looking at them and frowning,” and you’ve got a couple of cool scenes where he’s going to be doing this, then just get your scenes down. We can start building the plot in more detail in the next phase.

Forget about what anyone else would think

The idea is to get as much down as possible. We can start to build bridges between your scenes and ideas once we get into the next step. But for now, write, write, write. You may even want to write a scene in detail. You want to feed the muse, as it were, and just go for it. It doesn’t matter what it sounds like. Don’t get bogged down with it sounding ‘stupid’ or ‘lame’! No one else is reading it! Get it down so you can understand it. There are no bad ideas in brainstorming, they say, and you’re brainstorming with yourself so who cares what anyone else thinks?

So, step one: Why are you writing a book?

Step two: Brainstorm your book.

I’ve had lots of people ask me recently how to write a book and I thought my answer would make for a great blog series. So here it is.

The first thing you need to ask is: “Why do I want to write a book?”

As a ghostwriter,  I usually ask my prospective clients this question at the beginning of our correspondence. It’s an important question, even if I’m going to write the book for you. You need to decide why you want to do this. Your answer(s) will immediately help you to figure out how you’re going to put it together – or how we’ll work together as we create it.

• Are you wanting to write your life story – your memoir – for your kids to read one day? I have a friend who’s doing this right now and it’s a fantastic idea.

• Are you wanting to write a book that will help bolster or launch your career in a specialised field? (For example, a motivational book? A book on business? A book on medicine? A book on UFO’s?)

• Do you want to write a fiction story that shows how a character makes peace with their past? Or a story that makes people feel a certain way?

See, once you know why you want to write the book, you’ll have a good idea who your audience is going to be. This will be one of the first questions any publisher is going to ask you. Ultimately, they want to know who is actually going to buy your book. You can’t write a book and then only later decide who your audience is and who you think are actually going to read it.

Well, I guess you can. I mean you can do ANYTHING, really. But the likelihood of you sticking to a topic as you write will be quite low. And this is generally what most people complain about when they start writing – they find their thoughts are all over the place and after writing one chapter, they have no idea where to take it next.

Knowing the “why” you want to write the book immediately allows you to start brainstorming its contents without losing focus on the central topic. For example, I might say I want to write a book “on business.” Well, why do I want to write a book on a subject that already has a zillion titles available? Ah, well, let’s think. Well, I want to help people enjoy the work they do. Excellent, now with this I now can start brainstorming the book’s contents. For instance, I would probably want to cover why I think business is intrinsically good, what I think the main purpose of business is, and probably some stuff to do with the doctrine of vocation. Knowing this will avoid me adding in anything that isn’t entirely relevant, such as freelancing on Elance, because although it’s business-related it’s not entirely within the scope of helping people enjoy the work they do. That’s more to do with my own ghostwriting business anyway.

When approaching fiction, the same question applies. You might say, “I want to write a fantasy book,” but as you know there are a zillion of those around. Why do you want to write a fantasy book? Well, your answers might be, “I want to build a world like Tolkien did,” or, “I want to write a story that makes people feel a certain way,” or “I want to write a fantasy story where the hero is a mouse from outer space…” As you can see, you’re already now starting to get ideas for what your book will be about, characters in the story, and your book’s general feel.

So, step one: Why do you want to write a book?

Here’s step two.

When I first began on the adventure of writing full-time, I just came out of a dead-beat job that I hated. I always wanted to write when I was a kid, but at some stage of the journey I got discouraged when various people insisted that it could never be a reality. “You can’t make money out of that sort of thing,” and all that.

My writing journey began with one thought in my head, a calling as it were. To “challenge people in their thinking.” And through all the years I’ve endeavoured to do just that, with various degrees of success and failure. But one lone guy trying to do that through the writing medium will never really do the job. That’s why the prospect of ghostwriting excites me.

There are many amazing people in this world that are fabulous thinkers and have a heck of a lot to give. The problem is, even if they’re excellent communicators, they are also limited in their scope when it comes to getting their thinking “out there”.

I’m a big believer in relationships and the ordinary work we all do as we lead, love and encourage those around us. That should remain the main focus, in my opinion. But many of us can benefit from what is going on in those relationships. We can read the stories and be encouraged. We can learn from people all across the world and be lifted up to travel on our own journey of discovery. The writing medium allows us to draw from people from pretty much anywhere, especially with the advent of the Internet.

So, I see my job as a ghostwriter as one who can provide another avenue for the brilliant thinkers and doers out there. The more their stuff is out on the net, in the book stores, and so on, the more we can enjoy greater, better thinking in our world. My job is to be a cog in the wheel to do that. It doesn’t just have to be me trying my best with my limited resources. I can provide a base which many others can use in their own dreams to benefit others.

That’s my job as a ghostwriter and why I love it.