Technology
David Brewster
My book ghostwriting tools in 2021

Every now and then I’m asked about the various resources I use when I’m working on ghostwriting a book. These things change occasionally, so I thought it would be a good idea to share what I am using as my main book writing tools in 2021. So here they are: from recording interviews to organising to drafting to (almost) collaborating.

My book ghostwriting tools in 2021
Work Life
David Brewster
When to avoid showing your vulnerable side

Being willing to reveal a bit of yourself, especially through a bit of self-effacing humour, will lighten your text and give your readers something to connect to.

But this blog post is not about that sort of vulnerability.

No, this time I want to remind you of two of the less inspiring but just-as-important vulnerabilities every writer faces. Those vulnerabilities are backup and data security.

I was reminded recently about this by a rare computer crash that led to me losing a small amount of work. It wasn’t important and was easily recovered, but it could have been so much worse. Imagine losing a whole book to a hard drive crash!

When to avoid showing your vulnerable side
Write a book
David Brewster
No time, money or skill? You can still get your ...

If there’s one thing you learn from spending a chunk of your career in the world of books and writing, it’s that there are a lot of great stories out there. Personal stories of remarkable success against the odds. Business stories of risk taking and growth. Political stories of intrigue and persistence.

It would be great if all these stories could be told. As Spanish philosopher George Santayana famously wrote, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. Ideally, the stories would be recorded in books because books last. They go onto shelves and into libraries. They won’t disappear or become unreadable with new technologies.

Unfortunately, many terrific stories are never written down. Sometimes that’s because their owners don’t want to share them. Often

No time, money or skill? You can still get your book written
Reviews
David Brewster
The ghostwriter's nightmare scenario

Ghostwriter characters don't make it into fiction very often, but when they do they always seem to find themselves in jeopardy. 

In the 2010 Roman Polanski film The Ghost Writer, Ewan McGregor plays a ghostwriter working for a former British prime minister. In the end he knows too much and ... it doesn't end well. 

In the Netflix series House of Cards, Paul Sparks plays ghostwriter Thomas Yates who, after struggling to extract a decent memoir out of the president, fails to keep his professional distance, you might say. It takes a while – three seasons in fact – but it doesn't end well for him either.

And now we have Australian writer Richard Flanagan's latest novel, First Person, in which the narrator is a ghostwriter hired to author the memoir of a notorious conman. The story was inspired by Flanagan's own experience, very early in his career, of ghostwriting the autobiography of fraudster John Friedrich in 1991.

The ghostwriter's nightmare scenario
Writing
David Brewster
The joy of a good yarn

I love that my work as a ghostwriter gives me the opportunity to help people get their stories told. What I love even more is the fact that working on other people's stories gives me a front-row seat to those yarns.

Take Around the Grounds, for instance – a book that will be released by Finch Publishing on August 1. 

For this book I've been working with former ABC radio broadcaster Peter Newlinds. Peter's story is a celebration of sport, but from the spectator's side of the fence. This perspective gives the story a level of accessibility that most sporting memoirs, written as they are by former players, can't have. Few of us have the ability to play elite sport, but all of us are more than capable of joining in from the relative safety of the stands.

Of course we don't all have access to the commentary box as Peter did…

The joy of a good yarn

Writing

The art of compartmentalising (or how I finished four books in a year)

The art of compartmentalising (or how I finished four books in a year)

During the last year I've helped four separate books come to life: a business book and three memoirs. My involvement in these has varied from drafting and re-drafting all 80,000 words to heavy editing and rewriting. In three cases I've assisted with self-publishing while the other book will be trade published next month (more on that next time).

While I've thoroughly enjoyed working on each of these books, the challenge has been that I needed to work on all four at once. They were all at different stages at different times, but none of them could be left completely alone for very long. In addition the books were all quite different from one another in terms of their content, style and tone.

Moving between them without losing too much concentration was not always easy. The secret to my success, I believe, was that over the years I've become quite adept at compartmentalisation of my time and focus.

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Overcoming writer's block – Part two

Last time I wrote about overcoming perhaps the most common variety of writer’s block: mental inertia when confronted with a blank page or screen. This time I want to look another common form.

Every person involved in a creative endeavour – writers, photographers, composers, film makers, painters and so on – can probably relate to this. It happens regardless of age and regardless of experience. It is the situation in which you come up with something that you think is pure gold: a picture, a riff, a subplot, a subject idea. For writers it might be a magical metaphor, a perfect premise or simply a beautiful paragraph, sentence or even phrase.

You don’t know where this ‘gem’ came from – it feels like there was some form of devine intervention involved – but you do know that it is awesome.

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Write and publish your book in a year – Step 3: Draft

Write and publish your book in a year – Step 3: Draft

You’re two months into this non-fiction book-writing project and if you’ve been keeping up*, you should now have in front of you a reasonable outline of your book. Will that be the final outline? It might be, but it might not. At this point, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have some form of skeleton on which you can now start adding some meat.

By now you may have noticed a bit of a theme running through these ‘Write your book’ posts. For both collecting and outlining I was keen to emphasis the need for a Nike approach: ‘Just do it’. That same approach applies to drafting.

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Understand audience

While on holiday in the Solomons I sent David a text saying that my English was broken, but that he shouldn’t tell the boss! This tired old jibe worked because I understood my audience. Imagine telling a paranoid, micro-managing, hovering boss that I seemed to have lost the skill for which he employs me … the humour might’ve fallen flat. In any writing task it’s important to understand audience. In the old days of letters on paper in envelopes with stamps (remember?), we wouldn’t have dared written the same news in the same way to our pen friend as to our grandparents.

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How broken English led to rhythm in writing

My English broke early in the Solomon Islands. I was surprised and slightly alarmed – I earn my living from knowing about these things. I realised I was in trouble when writing in my journal (lying in the hammock, a breeze keeping the heat at bay …) I wrote ‘siteseeing’ and could not work out if I should’ve written sightseeing. With many custom sites – significant ancestral places – in the Solomons, ‘site’ seemed like the right word to me. I turned to my husband – known for his skills as a firefighter not as a speller – to ask him about site and sight. He looked at me with great pity.

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What's your style? (Don't tell me you don't have one!)

Recently our family has been watching the new TV dramatisation of the 1979 novel Puberty Blues. The girls watch the girls and notice how little has changed; my wife and I watch the fashions and are very pleased that some things, namely shorts and hairstyles, have changed. The show reminds me of one of the nice ironies of school uniforms: that no matter how ‘uniform’ a school wants its pupils to look, the kids will always find a way to add a touch of their own style to their ‘look’.

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Are you committing Capital punishment?

Are you committing Capital punishment?

If you spotted the deliberate extra capital in the title of this post, you may not need to read on. If, on the other hand, you think there should be more capital letters, then you should keep reading. Lately I’ve noticed an outbreak of Excessive Use Of Capitals At The Start Of Words. So I thought it might be good to recap on the main rules and current preferences.

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Making your ideas stick

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Like many of you, I have a lot of books on the shelves of my office, not to mention beside my bed. I’m a sucker for a snappy title which, combined with the instant gratification offered by online shopping, has made building a large collection all too easy in recent years. Of course, some of those books are still in the ‘queue’ to be read. Others have been partially read but they (or I) ran out of puff before finishing them. And then there are the few – the very few – that have been read from end to end and marked throughout with comments and/or sticky labels.

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Beat the NYE rush. Resolve now.

True, most of us are still coming to grips with the fact of Christmas decorations having been up for weeks. But before we know it, Xmas ‘11 will have been and gone and New Year’s Eve will be upon us. Which means only one thing: resolution time again. Now, be honest. Do you remember a single resolution made for this year? I’m guessing not. Most people struggle to remember, let alone implement, their annual commitments to themselves, largely because they are made in haste (and sometimes stupor) to the strains of Auld Lang Syne.

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Improve your writing in one easy step

After Melbourne author Anh Do won a few prizes recently for his book The Happiest Refugee, there was a bit of media eyebrow-raising when it came to light that Do had had the assistance of a ghostwriter in putting together his book. The unspoken implication seemed to be that perhaps Do’s award-winning credentials should be questioned for his having had this assistance. There is something odd about writing. Perhaps because we all learnt to write at school, and because there is no special equipment required, it is common for people to feel guilty about seeking help – or even a second opinion – on their writing. It’s a guilt few would feel about getting help with a computer problem or a presentation.

But writing is not easy.

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