The Dilemma of Ghosting

Recognizing that the ghosting of fiction presents a greater ethical dilemma than nonfiction, (Donald Bain, often named as Margaret Truman's ghostwriter) asks, "Is a book buyer cheated when buying a novel not written by the person whose name appears on the cover? Is it fraud? I don't think so, though my bias is understandable." Perhaps his bias is, in fact, understandable--but he goes on to add: "In most cases, the consumer gets a lot better book than if the nonwriting collaborator had tried to do it solo." This will not do. The book is sold on the premise that a celebrity wrote it, and there is no excuse for such a pretense other than deceiving the consumer.

Still, one might ask, where's the harm? The journeymen writers doing the actual work undoubtedly realize more profit from being celebrity ghostwriters than they could from novels under their own names. The idea that the inflated money the celebrity and ghostwriter get would otherwise go to more deserving but less famous professional writers is clearly specious. The deceptiveness of attributing a book to a person who didn't write it is minor next to the credits for doing nothing that feature in many major motion pictures. And what does the deceived reader care, if the novel is a good read that appears to draw on the celebrity's area of expertise?

The answer is that there are several harms. The books, more even than most commercial fiction driven by the marketplace rather than the artistic impulse, are rarely good mystery fiction. The celebrity publicity machine attracts readers that might otherwise be drawn to better books. While the big advance might not have gone elsewhere, some of the bookstore display space, public-library buying, and newspaper review attention certainly would. The public impression that anybody can write a book erodes the professional respect accorded to real writers. And finally, in the unlikely event a celebrity author actually writes a novel, no one in the cynical book world will believe it.

Bain writes, "I'm often asked when talking to groups about my career: 'How can you stand to see someone else's name on a book that you've written?'" He finds it easy to answer: He makes a good living writing for others, and he takes pride in doing the best work he can on every project. Most professional writers would agree. Writing is such a hard way to make a living, it's tough to blame the ghostwriter for going where the money is.

from "The Ghost of Miss Truman", The Weekly Standard 11/18/2002 by Jon L. Breen

THE WH*RE'S CHILD (Richard Russo)

Russo's most recent book. . . The Wh*re's Child (Knopf) is a collection of seven short stories-some new, some old. Although Russo finds that short stories pose a lesser risk ("If short stories fail, it's a month out of your life-damage control:'), they are much more difficult for him to write. "They are all about control, which I've never had a lot of. I'm a creature of digression. You can't allow yourself to be distracted."

Yet distraction is exactly what Russo goes after in his writing environment. He prefers to write in diners or busy places, where his mind can wander and make connections. "You can end up where you didn't mean to go, but it's probably more interesting than where you meant to go in the first place:'

Russo's advice to novelists in particular is this: "Whatever you're working on, take small bites. A few pages at a time. Whatever you're working on should be the most exciting thing. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component:'

Also: "Don't keep a journal because you'll think what you remembered to write down was important when it's actually not."

"Master of the Tragicomedy: Richard Russo" by Jane Friedman
Writer's Digest February 2003

Style

Style takes its final shape more from attitudes of mind than from principles of composition, for, as an elderly practitioner once remarked, "Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar." This moral observation would have no place in a rule book were it not that style is the writer, and therefore what you are, rather than what you know, will at last determine your style. If you write, you must believe-in the truth and worth of the scrawl, in the ability of the reader to receive and decode the message. No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence, or whose attitude is patronizing.

Many references have been made in this book to "the reader," who has been much in the news. It is now necessary to warn you that your concern for the reader must be pure: you must sympathize with the reader's plight (most readers are in trouble about half the time) but never seek to know the reader's wants. Your whole duty as a writer is to please and satisfy yourself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. Start sniffing the air, or glancing at the Trend Machine, and you are as good as dead, although you may make a nice living.

From The Elements of Style (William Strunk and E. B. White)

Don't Write Stage Directions

Don't write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, telling us how the character said it, or whether or not she moved to the couch isn't going to aid the case. We might understand better what the character means, but we aren't particularly going to care. (David Mamet)

Evoking Sensation

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it's raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

--from Sol Stein in Chapter One (E. L. Doctorow)

Good Writing Entices

The best of good writing will entice us into subjects and knowledge we would have declared were of no interest to us until we were seduced by the language they were dressed in. (Sol Stein)

A Writer Needs a Thick Skin

. . . A writer, shy or not, needs a tough skin, for no matter how advanced one's experience and career, expert criticism cuts to the quick, and one learns to endure and to perfect, if for no other reason than to challenge the pain-maker. (Sol Stein)

Reading

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good." (Samuel Johnson)