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

grammar

5 great places to go for advice on grammar

5 great places to go for advice on grammar

If you’re serious about your writing – and I mean any writing that is going to be seen by someone other than yourself – you should also be serious about getting your grammar right. This is the case even if you are of those who thinks grammar is overrated, that it’s ‘getting the meaning’ that matters. Remember that a good proportion of your readers will baulk at any grammatical error and will quite possibly lose focus on what you’re saying after they come across one. 

In any case, good writing is professional writing. If you want to present yourself as someone who knows their stuff, you need to be able to write about that stuff in proper English.

So, next time you are wondering about the rights and wrongs of semicolons or dashes, where should you go for help?

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Going hyper over 'my sister and me'

Going hyper over 'my sister and me'

A controversy blew up in New South Wales yesterday when Luke Foley, the Labor opposition leader, told a radio station that his single mother had ‘… invested her whole life into us, my sister and me, and I owe her everything…’.

Apparently the talkback radio lines went into overload as caller after caller complained that Foley should have said ‘my sister and I’ not ‘my sister and me’.

In fact Foley was correct.

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Five tips for writing numbers – to infinity and beyond

Five tips for writing numbers – to infinity and beyond

Let’s talk numbers. This is another topic that I file under the category of ‘things I always find myself having to correct when editing other people’s work’. (In case you’re wondering, two other topics in this category are the misuse of capitalsand double spacing between sentences.)

Let’s dive straight in, bearing in mind that there are few absolute rules on this topic and most of the following are really questions of style.

1. Digits or letters?

When using numbers in your writing, smaller whole numbers are generally spelt out (i.e. written as words) while larger numbers are written in digits. So ‘1’ is written as ‘one’; ‘100’ is written as 100.

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Quote me on this: using single and double quotation marks

Quote me on this: using single and double quotation marks

This is a small thing but being aware of it will help your writing appear more professional.

I’ve written in the past about the need to have a consistent writing style. Nothing shouts ‘amateur’ more than a mixture of American and British spellings on a website, the same word spelt in different ways or, worse still, a variable treatment of the way you spell your own company’s name. (It does happen.)

A common area for written content to become unkempt is in the use of quotation marks to mark speech and to emphasise words. I see this most often in blog posts. So let’s go to school on that.

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Solving the he/she his/her dilemma once and for all

Solving the he/she his/her dilemma once and for all

There’s a bug in the English language that has been driving non-fiction writers – including this ghostwriter – barmy for many years. That bug is the lack of a simple ‘third-person gender-neutral singular pronoun’. In plain English, there isn’t a single word that covers both ‘he’ and ‘she’, or both ‘his’ and ‘her’.

This is a problem when you are making a point that applies equally to males and females, as in:

“When a person wants to maintain his or her weight, the best way for him or her to do this is to eat a balanced diet and to make sure he or she gets plenty of exercise.”

Okay, that’s a bit clumsy, but you get the point. In a long document like a book or even a decent article or blog post, no matter how good the writing, this can quickly become unwieldy if not unreadable.

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Color or colour? Are you writing your English right?

Color or colour? Are you writing your English right?

Ever noticed that your computer and phone speak a different dialect of English from yours? How they think 'colour', 'analyse' and 'centre' are spelling mistakes when you know for a fact that they are spelled correctly? For the most part, those of us who write the Queen's English have become so used to being erroneously corrected by our computers that we don't even notice it any more.

It's time to do something about it.

Very broadly, there are two main English 'dialects' when it comes to spelling. The main differences are in word endings...

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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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Two ‘rules’ you need to unlearn – period.

How much have you retained of the grammar you learnt at school? I’m guessing not a lot – at least not in a formal sense. ‘Dominant clauses’, ‘past participles’ and ‘future perfect tense’? If you can define all those you probably don’t need to read on. Strangely, although most of us left a lot of grammar behind when we walked out of our final English exam, there are other English lessons which have stuck fast – despite their being wrong or now out-of-date.

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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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